The Evil of Sin

‘^ I a young man who came, saying;, ‘Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? our Lord replied, ‘Go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow me.’ A hard saying that! To an aged saint a very difficult duty, — how much more to a babe in Christ, to one but entering, if entering, on the Christian life! It is not raw recruits and beardless boys, but veterans, men inured to war, to the flash of bayonet and the roar of cannon, that generals send to the front — where bullets are flying, and men are falling thickest. What man would order a sailor boy.

the first day he trode the deck, to climb the shrouds, and reef the topsail in a storm when the ship, caught in a hurricane, was plunging and tearing through the sea? Yet so our Lord dealt with this youth — putting him to a trial which the most advanced Christian would find it hard to bear.

Let us fancy ourselves in his circumstances. What a surprise to be called, all of a sudden, to part with our whole property, to leave home with its many tender ties, the scene of happy memories, the grave of beloved parents, the society of kind friends, the respect of the world, and the reputation of wealth, to descend, at one step, from affluence and comfort, to follow one himself so poor that he had no place where to lay his head! We cannot fancy the shock and the recoil we ourselves should feel, and not wonder that our Lord laid a load so heavy on a back so young.

But the apparent harshness in this case, as in many others, ceases when we know all its circumstances. What looks cruel comes out then as the truest kindness. We should make the greatest mistakes if we pronounced judgment on a remedy in ignorance of the disease it was meant to cure. You enter, for example, the theatre of an hospital. A pale, weak, wasted sufferer, with terror and anxiety in his face, is borne in, and laid on a blood-stained table. His arms are pinioned; and into the quivering flesh of him who needs rest rather than pain the surgeon buries a knife; — deaf to his entreaties, unmoved by his groans. This seems cruel, but it is not so. We have only to see the morbid mass separated from a form it had long tortured with pain, and was hurrying to an untimely grave, to see that the knife was both in a kind and skilful hand — that there was need of the knife, and life in the knife. Even so, on turning to St Matthews account of this case, our Lord’s apparent harshness changes into true kindness; all which seemed stern and hard entirely vanishing. He, who came to Jesus seeking eternal life, had no sense of his own inability to save himself; but fancied that he had only to be told how, and he could do it. In his account of the transaction, Mark represents him saying, ‘Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? ’ — a form of the question not very different from the jailor’s, when, seizing a light, he burst into the dungeon, and cast himself at the apostles’ feet, to cry, Sirs, what shall 1 do to be saved? ‘Had that been the young man’s question, springing up in his heart as in the jailor’s, from feeling himself lost, — a poor, lost, helpless sinner, — this, doubtless, had been Christ’s gracious and quick reply, Believe in me, and thou shalt be saved.’ But the question, as more fully given by the Evangelist Matthew, is not simply, What shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ but — a very different one — What good tking shall I do to inherit eternal life? ‘Eternal life was a prize which, with some directions from Christ, he deemed himself able to win. Nor any wonder; for such was his ignorance of the nature of sin, of his own guilt and weakness, and how, spiritual in its nature, the law of God is violated as well by desires as by deeds, by wishes as by works, that to the re-

. MAA’S INABILITY TO SAVE HIMSELF. 79

petition of the commandments he replied with the most perfect self-complacency; Master, all these things have I kept from my youth.’

What is to be done in this case? It resembles that of one who, drugged with opium, has sunk into a deadly stupor; and to whom a stimulant has been, administered without any good effect. The light is flashed on his dull, dilated pupils, but in vain; his pulse beats weaker, his breathing comes thicker, his lethargy grows more and more profound. Another and stronger stimulant is required. Unless he is roused he dies. So with this young man. He must be awoke to a sense of his real condition. He perishes otherwise, in his ignorance and sins. His case requires the strongest, and his salvation will justify the most painful remedies. For never, till he sees that he cannot save himself, will he repair to Jesus, and fall at His feet, to cry, ‘Lord, save mc; I perish! ’

It was for that blessed purpose our Lord bade this man lay down the world, and take up the cross; His object being to make the man feel his need of Divine assistance and a new heart; and that for all his talk about another worlds he was glued to this one. But this could only be accomplished by putting the man to a trial. When in a calm sunny day the ship rises and falls on the billows, she seems as free as the waves she rides — nor till the wind rises and swells her drooping sails, and, making no progress, she plunges and pitches like a steed under spur and rein, do we discover that beneath the water, unseen, and till then unsuspected, an anchor, with its iron arms, grasps the sand, chaining her to the earth. So, also, it is, when, turning her eye to the sun, and inspired with some love of freedom, the eagle, spreading out her wings and springing from the perch, attempts to fly, but has hardly mounted ere she drops down again, that we discover the noble bird to be a miserable captive, and see the chain that binds her to the earth. And our blessed Lord bade this man break loose from the world, and mount to heaven, to teach him by his very failure that he could not; that he had no power to save himself; that salvation is not of bloody nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man — but of God: that in his own words to Nicodemus Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God, And that doctrine I now proceed to illustrate.

This doctrine, I may, by way of introduction, observe, is evident from this, that the saved are all debtors to the free choice and grace of God.

A man of taste, wishing to stock a garden, waits till the seed he sows has sprung, and the plants that spring from it have flowered; and then, rejecting the rest, he selects for his parterres the flowers of fairest hue and finest forms. To stock an orchard, he pursues a similar course; waiting till time has proved their character, he selects the best trees, leaving such as are barren, or produce only inferior fruit, to be burned as fuel — the only thing they are fit for. Now, if man saves, or is capable of saving, himself, it were reasonable to expect that in bestowing on men everlasting life, God would have pursued a similar course. But amid all the dark mysteries that invest this subject, it is plain that He did not. It is not on our merits, but on His mercy, the choice turns; else what does the Apostle mean who says, Not by works of righteousness that we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ?^ Not waiting till time has developed their character, as time does that of flowers and trees, God chooses those who are to be heirs of grace before their character is or can be formed — before their baptism, even before their birth; nor only before their birth, but before that of time itself — ere there was a man to sin, or a world to sin in; ere sun shone, or any angel sung. Blessed,^ said Paul, with adoring gratitude, be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as he hath chosen us in him lefore the foundation of the world.^ Chosen us, be it observed, not because we are holy; but making our holiness to be, not the cause, but the consequence of His choice — not the root it springs from, but the fruit it bears; ‘chosen us,’ he adds, * that we should be holy and without blame before him in love/

This truth — humbling to our pride, but placing our hopes on an immovable foundation — receives very remarkable and distinct expression in the reason which God assigned to Paul for requiring him to remain in Corinth. Steeped in the grossest idolatry, proverbial above any other in the world for unbridled licentiousness, the Apostle, who had succeeded in converting but a handful of its inhabitants, was about to leave that city; thinking that there no more good was to be done. Fancy his astonishment when God, appearing to him in a vision, said, ‘’Be not afraid, Paul, but speak, and hold not thy peace, for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee; for T have much people in this city’ — serving now at heathen altars, slaves now of the grossest vices, nevertheless they are my people; and here you are to abide, from these vile dust-heaps to gather out my jewels, from these dark depths of sin to bring up my pearls — they know not me, but I know them — they have not chosen me, but I have chosen them; not for their merits but out of my mercy chosen them before the foundation of Corinth, or of the world itself. If Gods ways are equal, unless there was one rule for the sinners of Corinth and another for us, none, therefore, are chosen from regard to their merits, or saved through their own ability — saK^ation being all of grace, pure and undeserved, as was once admirably brought out by a humble, unlettered Christian. Strong in faith, though not expert in argument, she answered the cavils of some who tried to puzzle her, as he who said to the Pharisees, This I know, that I once was blind, but now I see, — she replied, ‘This I know, that I never should have chosen God, unless God had first chosen me! ’

I remark that our inability to save ourselves is evident from these, among many other considerations: —

I. We cannot plead guiltless of sin. Guiltless? What man so ignorant as to refuse his assent to the words of John, If we should say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves — we make God a liar, and the truth is not in us?’ In yonder temple, from which the crowd is rushing, priests, scribes, Pharisees, old and young, hustling each other in their haste, and leaving but our Lord, who stoops writing on the sanded floor, and a woman He has saved, for time at least — let us hope, she going to sin no more, for eternity — who had remained behind? Why this hot haste from the house of God? No fire has caught its beams; nor are its walls of mighty stones, rocked by an earthquake, cracking to their fall. Nothing but this has happened — a guilty woman has been dragged before Christ for doom; and He has pronounced the doom, but in this unexpected form, ‘Let him that is without sin cast the first stone at her! Him that is without sin? — no hand is mouldering, nor shall any moulder in the dust to meet that condition, and execute the fatal sentence. For however irreproachable we appear in the sight of men, and more than irreproachable, respected, esteemed, and praised we may be of men, where in pew or pulpit is he who could hold up his hands before God, and say, These hands are clean! We have all sinned; and since spiritual as well as temporal death has passed on all men because all have sinned, we are as unable to save ourselves as a dead man to leave his coffin, and return with the mourners who have carried him to the grave.

1. Our utmost efforts fall short of a perfect service. Such Gods law requires; but who has ever reached, or even approached it? — who has satisfied the law, as summed up in these grand and lofty words, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself?’ Not St Paul. He says, ‘When I would do good.

evil is present with me. — That which I wouldj I do not, and that which I would not, that I do.’ And where Paul failed, who can hope to succeed? To him who, in the splendour of his gifts and graces, shone without an equal when he lived, nor has had any successor since he died, dare any of us say. Stand aside, Paul, I am holier than thou? But suppose we could, what of that? The robe that, blanched by dews and rain and sunshine, seems so white beside the mould some hoary sexton flings from an open grave, turns dull and dingy laid on a bank of snow; and who, though he may seem an angel in the company of reprobates, of the profligate and profane, could stand comparison, side by side, with God’s Son or God’s holy law? Whom would not the contrast humble? — from whose lips call forth the language both of confession and prayer? — our confession. Job’s, If I wash myself in snow-water and make my hands never so clean, yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch and mine own clothes shall abhor me’ — that our confession, and this, the Psalmist’s, our, prayer, ‘Enter not into judgment with thy servant, for in thy sight shall no man living be justified !^

3. As sinners we are without excuse. Ere the judge condemns a man found guilty of a capital offence he asks him what he can say why sentence of death should not be passed on him. And were He who i? net willing that any should perish but wherever He condemns ’ condemns reluctant,’ so to deal with us what should ^;c say to excuse our sins and escape their punishment? If the plea avails, we save ourselves; otherwise we cannot. Now men make excuses to their conscience, and also to their fellow-men; but let us try what value these would have at the judgment-seat of a righteous God.

First, They plead sorrow. But though their sorrow were as deep, and true, and godly, as their continuing in sin proves it is not, of what worth is this plea in the eye of the law? Some wretch by his crimes brings himself to the bar of his countrv — and there, pale, and sorrowful, and sad enough many have looked — but, though he pleads for his life with tears, sorrow never baulked the gallows of its due. Waste and riotous living have brought many to bankruptcy, but sorrow never satisfied the demands of defrauded and indignant creditors. Sorrow acquits no criminals: sorrow pays no debts: sorrow heals no wounds: it never restored to injured woman her fair name and character, nor recalled to life the dead, whose gray hairs a prodigal had brought down to the grave. Sorrow cannot repair the wrongs we do to our fellow- creatures, still less those we do to God. Offer it now to thy governor, will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith the Lord of hosts .^

Second, They plead that they have not been great sinners. This was the Pharisees plea — I thank thee, O God, that I am not as other men, nor even as this publican.’ What that was worth, we know from this, that the poor publican, who stood afar off, and beat on his breast, and cried, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner, went down to his house justified; but not the other. The

Pharisees was not PauPs plea. Glorying only in the cross of Christ, he called himself the least of saints, and the chief of sinners. Nor is it a plea to which any court of justice would attach the slightest value. Think of a man found guilty of theft pleading that he should be allowed to go free, because, when he stole your purse, he did not take your life! Worthless anywhere, such a plea is nowhere so worthless as at the bar where Divine justice sits enthroned; and all who reject the Saviour, rejecting mercy, shall be tried by a law whose stern terms are these, Cursed is every one who continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them/

Third, They plead the strength of temptation. This plea, like the others — a refuge of lies, is neither new nor true. It is not true; for who can deny having committed many sins they might have avoided: yielded to many temptations they might have resisted? It is not new; having been tried in Eden, and found wanting. Hast thou,^ said God to Adam, eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thoa shouldst not eat? ‘’ To excuse himself, he pleaded temptation — The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat, What is this that thou hast done?^ said God, turning next to Eve. Taking up the same ground, she also pleads temptation as her excuse — The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat, Vain subterfuge; Eden was lost, and our world buried in the ruins of the fall! Now the plea which did not excuse their sin will still less excuse ours. For however we may plead its strength, there is no temptation we might not resist — in the hottest furnace walk unhurt, and go dryshod through the deepest sea. My grace is sufficient for thee,^ is Gods own sure and blessed word; and however hard the fight or heavy the burden, we had but to seek His grace, to boast with His servant, Paul — ‘I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me.^ Never has it been for want of faithfulness on His part, but of faith on ours, that this His grand promise has seemed to fail — When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee/

Fourth, We are of ourselves unable to embrace the salvation which God has provided. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,^ is indeed glad tidings; but faith itself is the gift of God. Some, it is true, fancy that it is an easy thing to believe, and that we can turn our minds, as our steps when they have brought us to the brink of a precipice — turn our hearts, as the steersman the ship, which, by a prompt movement of the helm, he guides clear of the thundering reef, and sends away in safety, ploughing through the foam, on another tack. But a lost sinner — whose proper figure is a vessel without masts or rudder, drifting at the mercy of the wild waves on a rocky shore — has no power of his own to turn from sin and the error of his ways. Were it otherwise, our Lord’s words had been literally, universally fulfilled — I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men after me, Are they so? Alas! in how many churches is He lifted up every Sabbath, nor draws one? — offered every Sabbath only to be wickedly rejected?- — his servants, grieved at mans mad obstinacy, returning to their Master with the old sorrowful complaint, ‘No man hath believed my report, and to none is the arm of the Lord revealed! Could man change his heart and habits, it is incredible that any should perish with Gods word in their hands; not as certainly, but more certainly, than such as never had the offer of a Saviour. Here is a man who knows that if he goes to Christ, he will go to heaven; and if not, that he shall be sent to hell — who knows that Jesus is the way, the only way to true happiness and holiness in this world, and salvation in the next — who knows that he must die, and that in the hour of robustest health, there is but a step between him and the grave — who knows, therefore, that if he put off salvation for a single hour, that hour may be a whole eternity too late — when with all those powerful motives to turn this moment to Christy that man stands unmoved, how true the words of Jesus, No man can come unto me except the Father which hath sent me draw him!

No doubt, it is in the power of all, after a fashion, to use the means of grace — by that I mean to read the Bible, and say their prayers, and go to church. But, oh, what need for prayer that a Divine power may accompany these, since, without the influences of the Holy Spirit, they will be found to harden rather than to soften the heart! Experience proves this; and that he is less likely to be saved who has sat from childhood under a Gospel ministry, than one on whose eyes the glorious Gospel of the blessed God opens with the novelty, and fi’eshness, and astonishment, a man, born and brought up in a coal-pit, would feel when gazing for the first time on the starspangled sky. Wesley and Whitefield reaped their largest harvests on neglected fields; — those, adown whose begrimed cheeks, as they preached.

the starting tears ran white channels, being miners and peasants and colliers, men who heard the terrors of hell and the love of God, for the first time in their lives, set fully and affectionately before them. The heart grows callous through unsanctified familiarity with Divine things — even with danger itself. And thus, as the veteran of many a battle-field waits the advance of the foe and the crush of musketry with a calm, intrepid bearing, in like manner familiarity with spiritual danger begets such spiritual indifference that the law thunders and a Saviour entreats in vain — making it evident that men are no more to be driven from sin by the fear of hell, than drawn from it by the hopes of heaven. Put this to the test. Let the subjects of our experiment be a little child and an old man. How easy it is to awaken the fears, and touch the conscience, and bring tears to the eyes of childhood! But those only who have tried it, as I have done, can know, and those only who know it can believe, how difficult it is to reach the conscience and shake the confidence of graceless and gray-haired age. I am not depreciating the means of grace. Far from it. On the contrary, I recommend a diligent, but a devout, use of them, with earnest prayer that through an outpouring of the Holy Spirit the means may be made the channels of grace. Without that the church we attend, and the sermons we hear, and the Bible we read, and the sacraments we partake of, will but harden our hearts — even as familiarity with funerals is apt to make us think not more but less of death, until, often treading that path which others shall one day tread with us, we can carry a neighbour to the gates of another world, and leave him there, to return to the business and pleasures of this without one suitable and serious thought.

In closing this chapter let me remark. The deeper our sense of mans inability to save himself, we are the more likely to be saved. Do not despair. Deliverance is often nearest when it seems most distant. *” Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity,’ is one true proverb The darkest hour is before the dawn, is another: and many a poor, distressed sinners experience has been that of a crew tossed for long days on the stormy deep. They had lost their reckoning; enveloped in an impenetrable mist, their poor bark was driving they knew not where: at length they catch the dreaded roar of breakers; louder and louder they are heard thundering on a rugged shore. Unable to do anything to save themselves and avert a fatal issue, their hearts sink within them, when suddenly, as if Gods own hand had drawn aside the curtain, the fog-bank parts to show them a spacious harbour, opening out its arms to receive them on the bosom of its calm blue waters. So the hope of Christ has opened to many who, finding that they had no hope in themselves, were crying, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? A paradox though it seems, there is greatest hope when our case looks most hopeless. ‘The Lord,^ it is said, shall judge his people, and repent himself for his

servants when he seeth that their power is gone, and that there is none shut up or left, So it fell out with Abraham. Not till he and Isaac had climbed the mountain,, not till the altar was built and the victim bound;, not till with a last long look and a last warm kiss, and a last sad farewell, the father had raised his arm to strike, was that arm arrested — did the angel, hovering over the scene, descend to stay the bloody sacrifice. It was so likewise when Israel was captive in the land of Babylon, and their harps hung mute on its willow trees, and Gods own holy house lay in desolate, silent ruins. Their deliverance never seemed farther distant than when most near. Never was their captivity more galling, their misery so insulted, or their humiliation so complete, as on that night, when Belshazzar, mad with wine and wickedness, called for the vessels of the sanctuary, and turning them into drinking cups, caroused with his wives and concubines, his princes and his lords. Yet that was the very night on which the tyrants doom was written, and the deliverance of the captives begun. Israel by the shores of the Red Sea; the three Hebrew martyrs in the fiery furnace; Daniel cast into the lions’ den; Peter in chains and asleep in prison — these cases, all admirable correctives to despair show us how God often waits till things are at the worst. He saves at the uttermost — when with all power all pride is gone. Nor shall these words have been written in vain, if any of my readers, convinced of their inability to save themselves shall turn to Christ — like the disciples when abandoning all further effort to keep their boat afloat and reach the landj they threw up their oars, to throw themselves on the power and love of Jesus, and wake Him with the cry, ‘Master, carest thou not that we perish? Now He does care that we should not perish. He died that we might not perish. And He who died for us, with love time can neither change nor cool, longs to save us. His arms open to embrace us. Heaven opens to admit us. Angels stand ready to rejoice over us. So venturing, as well we may, on Christ’s boundloo SA VING KNO W LEDGE.

less power and boundless kindness let us fall at His feet to cry, ‘Lord, save me, I perish! ’ — or with the man of old, ‘’Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief!^ — for whosoever cometh unto Him, He will in no wise cast out; and whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.