Third Tuesday in Lent.
THE EVIDENCE FOR ORIGINAL SIN.
1. The existence of Original Sin in man is proved to us in the first place by our very constitution. We have only to look into our own selves to discern its presence. S. Paul, speaking of himself in his condition under the law, says, “When we were in the flesh, the motions of sin ... did work in our members.” (Rom. vii. 5.) “That which I do, I allow not; for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.... To will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good, I find not. For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do.... I delight in the law of God after the inward man; but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin that is in my members.” Who does not know this truth by experience? Who has not felt the conflict; realized that there are different and opposing elements in his nature? There is a mixture of dignity and meanness, of nobility and baseness, of the knowledge of what is right and a love of what is evil, in all men. They have but to look steadily into themselves to see that it is so.
2. Scripture affirms the existence of Original Sin. "Manborn of a woman is of few days and full of trouble ... who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one." (Job xiv. 1, 4.) “Behold, I was shapen in wickedness, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Ps. li. 5.) “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” (Rom. v. 12.)
3. The Church has always taught the existence of Original Sin, and the Sacrament of Baptism, ever ministered, is a witness to this, for Baptism is the means whereby men pass out of a condition of natural incapacity to fulfil God’s law into a state of grace in which they are able to do those things God has commanded. The Sacrament of Baptism was instituted as a corrective to Original Sin, to remedy the defects produced in man by his filiation from Adam.
By nature—that nature degraded and corrupted through the fall—we can do no good thing; but by Baptism we pass into the Kingdom of Grace, and therein are enabled to stand, are strengthened, enlightened, and cleansed.
4. Reason, moreover, assures us of the existence of Original Sin. In the first place, we know that God is good, and we cannot understand that a good God should have created man, the noblest of the works of creation, to suffering and misery. We feel assured, if we recognize God as good and loving to all His works, that He did not make man to be what he is, full of infirmities, ignorances, narrownesses, liable to suffering intensely acute, to continuous trouble, to decay, to diseases most painful, distressful in every way, loathsome, and finally to complete dissolution. Again, we have but to look at history, to read the daily records of crime in the papers, to see that there is afrightful amount of evil among men, and always has existed, and this cannot proceed from a good God.
We must either deny the goodness of God, and say that man has been created by a capricious Deity—a mixture of benevolence and malevolence, of goodness and of evil—or else, we must allow that God created men good, but that His purpose has been hindered, and partially made ineffectual through the introduction into man’s nature of something that was alien to it at first. The introduction of this alien element can only be attributable to man himself, who, having afree-will, could turn away from the course ordained for Him by His Creator, could deflect from the direct line, could bend from the way of happiness to that of misery.
5. A state of Original Sin is not a condition of guilt for act done, but a condition of impotency or partial impotency towards good; and Baptism affords supernatural assistance towards the undoing of those bad effects produced by the Fall, and transmitted through all generations. It places man in such a condition that little by little he can recover himself, and be restored to the original condition of innocence, vigour, and vitality of the first man as he left the hands of God.
Simple Maltese Cross