Section III.—Universality Of Sin.We have shown that sin is a state, a state of the will, a selfish state of the will. We now proceed to show that this selfish state of the will is universal. We divide our proof into two parts. In the first, we regard sin in its aspect as conscious violation of law; in the second, in its aspect as a bias of the nature to evil, prior to or underlying consciousness.I. Every human being who has arrived at moral consciousness has committed acts, or cherished dispositions, contrary to the divine law.1.Proof from Scripture.The universality of transgression is:(a) Set forth in direct statements of Scripture.1 K. 8:46—“there is no man that sinneth not”;Ps. 143:2—“enter not into judgment with thy servant; For in thy sight no man living is righteous”;Prov. 20:9—“Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?”;Eccl. 7:20—“Surely there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not”;Luke 11:13—“If ye, then, being evil”;Rom. 3:10, 12—“There is none righteous, no, not one.... There is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one”;19, 20—“that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of God: because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight; for through the law cometh the knowledge of sin”;23—“for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God”;Gal. 3:22—“the scripture shut up all things under sin”;James 3:2—“For in many things we all stumble”;1 John 1:8—“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”CompareMat. 6:12—“forgive us our debts”—given as a prayer for all men;14—“if ye forgive men their trespasses”—the condition of our own forgiveness.(b) Implied in declarations of the universal need of atonement, regeneration, and repentance.Universal need of atonement:Mark 16:16—“He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved”(Mark 16:9-20, though probably not written by Mark, is nevertheless of canonical authority);John 3:16—“God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish”;6:50—“This is the bread which cometh down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die”;12:47—“I came not to judge the world, but to save the world”;Acts 4:12—“in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved.”Universal need of regeneration:John 3:3, 5—“Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.... Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”Universal need of repentance:Acts 17:30—“commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent.”Yet Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, in her“Unity of Good,”speaks of“the illusion which calls sin real and man a sinner needing a Savior.”[pg 574](c) Shown from the condemnation resting upon all who do not accept Christ.John 3:18—“he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God”;36—“he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him”; Compare1 John 5:19—“the whole world lieth in[i. e., in union with]the evil one”; see Annotated Paragraph Bible,in loco. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 318—“Law requires love to God. This implies love to our neighbor, not only abstaining from all injury to him, but righteousness in all our relations, forgiving instead of requiting, help to enemies as well as friends in all salutary ways, self-discipline, avoidance of all sensuous immoderation, subjection of all sensuous activity as means for spiritual ends in the kingdom of God, and all this, not as a matter of outward conduct merely, but from the heart and as the satisfaction of one's own will and desire. This is the will of God respecting us, which Jesus has revealed and of which he is the example in his life. Instead of this, man universally seeks to promote his own life, pleasure, and honor.”(d) Consistent with those passages which at first sight seem to ascribe to certain men a goodness which renders them acceptable to God, where a closer examination will show that in each case the goodness supposed is a merely imperfect and fancied goodness, a goodness of mere aspiration and impulse due to preliminary workings of God's Spirit, or a goodness resulting from the trust of a conscious sinner in God's method of salvation.InMat 9:12—“They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick”—Jesus means those who in their own esteem are whole;cf.13—“I came not to call the righteous, but sinners”—“if any were truly righteous, they would not need my salvation; if they think themselves so, they will not care to seek it”(An. Par. Bib.). InLuke 10:30-37—the parable of the good Samaritan—Jesus intimates, not that the good Samaritan was not a sinner, but that there were saved sinners outside of the bounds of Israel. InActs 10:35—“in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him”—Peter declares, not that Cornelius was not a sinner, but that God had accepted him through Christ; Cornelius was already justified, but he needed to know (1)thathe was saved, and (2)howhe was saved; and Peter was sent to tell him of the fact, and of the method, of his salvation in Christ. InRom. 2:14—“for when Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law unto themselves”—it is only said that in certain respects the obedience of these Gentiles shows that they have an unwritten law in their hearts; it is not said that they perfectly obey the law and therefore have no sin—for Paul says immediately after (Rom. 3:9)—“we before laid to the charge both of Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin.”So with regard to the words“perfect”and“upright,”as applied to godly men. We shall see, when we come to consider the doctrine of Sanctification, that the word“perfect,”as applied to spiritual conditions already attained, signifies only a relative perfection, equivalent to sincere piety or maturity of Christian judgment, in other words, the perfection of a sinner who has long trusted in Christ, and in whom Christ has overcome his chief defects of character. See1 Cor. 2:6—“we speak wisdom among the perfect”(Am. Rev.:“among them that are full-grown”);Phil. 3:15—“let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded”—i. e., to press toward the goal—a goal expressly said by the apostles to be not yet attained (v. 12-14).“Est deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo.”God is the“spark that fires our clay.”S. S. Times, Sept. 21, 1901:609—“Humanity is better and worse than men have painted it. There has been a kind of theological pessimism in denouncing human sinfulness, which has been blind to the abounding love and patience and courage and fidelity to duty among men.”A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 287-290—“There is a natural life of Christ, and that life pulses and throbs in all men everywhere. All men are created in Christ, before they are recreated in him. The whole race lives, moves, and has its being in him, for he is the soul of its soul and the life of its life.”To Christ then, and not to unaided human nature, we attribute the noble impulses of unregenerate men. These impulses are drawings of his Spirit, moving men to repentance. But they are influences of his grace which, if resisted, leave the soul in more than its original darkness.2.Proof from history, observation, and the common judgment of mankind.(a) History witnesses to the universality of sin, in its accounts of the universal prevalence of priesthood and sacrifice.[pg 575]See references in Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 161-172, 335-339. Baptist Review, 1882:343—“Plutarch speaks of the tear-stained eyes, the pallid and woe-begone countenances which he sees at the public altars, men rolling themselves in the mire and confessing their sins. Among the common people the dull feeling of guilt was too real to be shaken off or laughed away.”(b) Every man knows himself to have come short of moral perfection, and, in proportion to his experience of the world, recognizes the fact that every other man has come short of it also.Chinese proverb:“There are but two good men; one is dead, and the other is not yet born.”Idaho proverb:“The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”But the proverb applies to the white man also. Dr. Jacob Chamberlain, the missionary, said:“I never but once in India heard a man deny that he was a sinner. But once a Brahmin interrupted me and said:‘I deny your premisses. I am not a sinner. I do not need to do better.’For a moment I was abashed. Then I said:‘But what do your neighbors say?’Thereupon one cried out:‘He cheated me in trading horses’; another:‘He defrauded a widow of her inheritance.’The Brahmin went out of the house, and I never saw him again.”A great nephew of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, when a child, wrote in a few lines an“Essay on the Life of Man,”which ran as follows:“A man's life naturally divides itself into three distinct parts: the first when he is contriving and planning all kinds of villainy and rascality,—that is the period of youth and innocence. In the second, he is found putting in practice all the villainy and rascality he has contrived,—that is the flower of mankind and prime of life. The third and last period is that when he is making his soul and preparing for another world,—that is the period of dotage.”(c) The common judgment of mankind declares that there is an element of selfishness in every human heart, and that every man is prone to some form of sin. This common judgment is expressed in the maxims:“No man is perfect”;“Every man has his weak side”, or“his price”; and every great name in literature has attested its truth.Seneca, De Ira, 3:26—“We are all wicked. What one blames in another he will find in his own bosom. We live among the wicked, ourselves being wicked”; Ep., 22—“No one has strength of himself to emerge [from this wickedness]; some one must needs hold forth a hand; some one must draw us out.”Ovid, Met., 7:19—“I see the things that are better and I approve them, yet I follow the worse.... We strive even after that which is forbidden, and we desire the things that are denied.”Cicero:“Nature has given us faint sparks of knowledge; we extinguish them by our immoralities.”Shakespeare, Othello, 3:3—“Where's that palace whereinto foul things Sometimes Intrude not? Who has a breast so pure, But some uncleanly apprehensions keep leets [meetings in court] and law-days, and in sessions sit With meditations lawful?”Henry VI., II:3:3—“Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.”Hamlet, 2:2, compares God's influence to the sun which“breeds maggots in a dead dog, Kissing carrion,”—that is, God is no more responsible for the corruption in man's heart and the evil that comes from it, than the sun is responsible for the maggots which its heat breeds in a dead dog; 3:1—“We are arrant knaves all.”Timon of Athens, 1:2—“Who lives that's not depraved or depraves?”Goethe:“I see no fault committed which I too might not have committed.”Dr. Johnson:“Every man knows that of himself which he dare not tell to his dearest friend.”Thackeray showed himself a master in fiction by having no heroes; the paragons of virtue belonged to a cruder age of romance. So George Eliot represents life correctly by setting before us no perfect characters; all act from mixed motives. Carlyle, hero-worshiper as he was inclined to be, is said to have become disgusted with each of his heroes before he finished his biography. Emerson said that to understand any crime, he had only to look into his own heart. Robert Burns:“God knows I'm no thing I would be, Nor am I even the thing I could be.”Huxley:“The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.”And he speaks of“the infinite wickedness”which has attended the course of human history. Matthew Arnold:“What mortal, when he saw, Life's voyage done, his heavenly Friend, Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly:—I have kept uninfringed[pg 576]my nature's law: The inly written chart thou gavest me, to guide me, I have kept by to the end?”Walter Besant, Children of Gibeon:“The men of ability do not desire a system in which they shall not be able to do good to themselves first.”“Ready to offer praise and prayer on Sunday, if on Monday they may go into the market place to skin their fellows and sell their hides.”Yet Confucius declares that“man is born good.”He confounds conscience with will—thesenseof right with theloveof right. Dean Swift's worthy sought many years for a method of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Human nature of itself is as little able to bear the fruits of God.Every man will grant (1) that he is not perfect in moral character; (2) that love to God has not been the constant motive of his actions,i. e., that he has been to some degree selfish; (3) that he has committed at least one known violation of conscience. Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 86, 87—“Those theorists who reject revealed religion, and remand man to the first principles of ethics and morality as the only religion that he needs, send him to a tribunal that damns him”; for it is simple fact that“no human creature, in any country or grade of civilization, has ever glorified God to the extent of his knowledge of God.”3.Proof from Christian experience.(a) In proportion to his spiritual progress does the Christian recognize evil dispositions within him, which but for divine grace might germinate and bring forth the most various forms of outward transgression.See Goodwin's experience, in Baird, Elohim Revealed, 409; Goodwin, member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, speaking of his conversion, says:“An abundant discovery was made to me of my inward lusts and concupiscence, and I was amazed to see with what greediness I had sought the gratification of every sin.”Töllner's experience, in Martensen's Dogmatics: Töllner, though inclined to Pelagianism, says:“I look into my own heart and I see with penitent sorrow that I must in God's sight accuse myself of all the offences I have named,”—and he had named only deliberate transgressions;—“he who does not allow that he is similarly guilty, let him look deep into his own heart.”John Newton sees the murderer led to execution, and says:“There, but for the grace of God, goes John Newton.”Count de Maistre:“I do not know what the heart of a villain may be—I only know that of a virtuous man, and that is frightful.”Tholuck, on the fiftieth anniversary of his professorship at Halle, said to his students:“In review of God's manifold blessings, the thing I seem most to thank him for is the conviction of sin.”Roper Ascham:“By experience we find out a short way, by a long wandering.”Luke 15:25-32is sometimes referred to as indicating that there are some of God's children who never wander from the Father's house. But there were two prodigals in that family. The elder was a servant in spirit as well as the younger. J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 41, 42—“In the wish of the elder son that he might sometimes feast with his own friends apart from his father, was contained the germ of that desire to escape the wholesome restraints of home which, in its full development, had brought his brother first to riotous living, and afterwards to the service of the stranger and the herding of swine. This root of sin is in us all, but in him it was not so full-grown as to bring death. Yet he says:‘Lo, these many years do I serve thee’(δουλεύω—as a bondservant),‘and I never transgressed a commandment of thine.’Are the father's commandments grievous? Is service true and sincere, without love from the heart? The elder brother was calculating toward his father and unsympathetic toward his brother.”Sir J. R. Seelye, Ecce Homo:“No virtue can be safe, unless it is enthusiastic.”Wordsworth:“Heaven rejects the love Of nicely calculated less or more.”(b) Since those most enlightened by the Holy Spirit recognize themselves as guilty of unnumbered violations of the divine law, the absence of any consciousness of sin on the part of unregenerate men must be regarded as proof that they are blinded by persistent transgression.It is a remarkable fact that, while those who are enlightened by the Holy Spirit and who are actually overcoming their sins see more and more of the evil of their hearts and lives, those who are the slaves of sin see less and less of that evil, and often deny that they are sinners at all. Rousseau, in his Confessions, confesses sin in a spirit which itself needs to be confessed. He glosses over his vices, and magnifies his virtues.“No[pg 577]man,”he says,“can come to the throne of God and say:‘I am a better man than Rousseau.’... Let the trumpet of the last judgment sound when it will: I will present myself before the Sovereign Judge with this book in my hand, and I will say aloud:‘Here is what I did, what I thought, and what I was.’”“Ah,”said he, just before he expired,“how happy a thing it is to die, when one has no reason for remorse or self-reproach!”And then, addressing himself to the Almighty, he said:“Eternal Being, the soul that I am going to give thee back is as pure at this moment as it was when it proceeded from thee; render it a partaker of thy felicity!”Yet, in his boyhood, Rousseau was a petty thief. In his writings, he advocated adultery and suicide. He lived for more than twenty years in practical licentiousness. His children, most of whom, if not all, were illegitimate, he sent off to the foundling hospital as soon as they were born, thus casting them upon the charity of strangers, yet he inflamed the mothers of France with his eloquent appeals to them to nurse their own babies. He was mean, vacillating, treacherous, hypocritical, and blasphemous. And in his Confessions, he rehearses the exciting scenes of his life in the spirit of the bold adventurer. See N. M. Williams, in Bap. Review, art.: Rousseau, from which the substance of the above is taken.Edwin Forrest, when accused of being converted in a religious revival, wrote an indignant denial to the public press, saying that he had nothing to regret; his sins were those of omission rather than commission; he had always acted upon the principle of loving his friends and hating his enemies; and trusting in the justice as well as the mercy of God, he hoped, when he left this earthly sphere, to“wrap the drapery of his couch about him, and lie down to pleasant dreams.”And yet no man of his time was more arrogant, self-sufficient, licentious, revengeful. John Y. McCane, when sentenced to Sing Sing prison for six years for violating the election laws by the most highhanded bribery and ballot-stuffing, declared that he had never done anything wrong in his life. He was a Sunday School Superintendent, moreover. A lady who lived to the age of 92, protested that, if she had her whole life to live over again, she would not alter a single thing. Lord Nelson, after he had received his death wound at Trafalgar, said:“I have never been a great sinner.”Yet at that very time he was living in open adultery. Tennyson, Sea Dreams:“With all his conscience and one eye askew, So false, he partly took himself for true.”Contrast the utterance of the apostle Paul:1 Tim. 1:15—“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”It has been well said that“the greatest of sins is to be conscious of none.”Rowland Hill:“The devil makes little of sin, that he may retain the sinner.”The following reasons may be suggested for men's unconsciousness of their sins: 1. We never know the force of any evil passion or principle within us, until we begin to resist it. 2. God's providential restraints upon sin have hitherto prevented its full development. 3. God's judgments against sin have not yet been made manifest. 4. Sin itself has a blinding influence upon the mind. 5. Only he who has been saved from the penalty of sin is willing to look into the abyss from which he has been rescued.—That a man is unconscious of any sin is therefore only proof that he is a great and hardened transgressor. This is also the most hopeless feature of his case, since for one who never realizes his sin there is no salvation. In the light of this truth, we see the amazing grace of God, not only in the gift of Christ to die for sinners, but in the gift of the Holy Spirit to convince men of their sins and to lead them to accept the Savior.Ps. 90:8—“Thou hast set ... Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance”= man's inner sinfulness is hidden from himself, until it is contrasted with the holiness of God. Light = a luminary or sun, which shines down into the depths of the heart and brings out its hidden evil into painful relief. See Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:248-259; Edwards, Works, 2:326; John Caird, Reasons for Men's Unconsciousness of their Sins, in Sermons, 33.
Section III.—Universality Of Sin.We have shown that sin is a state, a state of the will, a selfish state of the will. We now proceed to show that this selfish state of the will is universal. We divide our proof into two parts. In the first, we regard sin in its aspect as conscious violation of law; in the second, in its aspect as a bias of the nature to evil, prior to or underlying consciousness.I. Every human being who has arrived at moral consciousness has committed acts, or cherished dispositions, contrary to the divine law.1.Proof from Scripture.The universality of transgression is:(a) Set forth in direct statements of Scripture.1 K. 8:46—“there is no man that sinneth not”;Ps. 143:2—“enter not into judgment with thy servant; For in thy sight no man living is righteous”;Prov. 20:9—“Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?”;Eccl. 7:20—“Surely there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not”;Luke 11:13—“If ye, then, being evil”;Rom. 3:10, 12—“There is none righteous, no, not one.... There is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one”;19, 20—“that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of God: because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight; for through the law cometh the knowledge of sin”;23—“for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God”;Gal. 3:22—“the scripture shut up all things under sin”;James 3:2—“For in many things we all stumble”;1 John 1:8—“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”CompareMat. 6:12—“forgive us our debts”—given as a prayer for all men;14—“if ye forgive men their trespasses”—the condition of our own forgiveness.(b) Implied in declarations of the universal need of atonement, regeneration, and repentance.Universal need of atonement:Mark 16:16—“He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved”(Mark 16:9-20, though probably not written by Mark, is nevertheless of canonical authority);John 3:16—“God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish”;6:50—“This is the bread which cometh down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die”;12:47—“I came not to judge the world, but to save the world”;Acts 4:12—“in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved.”Universal need of regeneration:John 3:3, 5—“Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.... Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”Universal need of repentance:Acts 17:30—“commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent.”Yet Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, in her“Unity of Good,”speaks of“the illusion which calls sin real and man a sinner needing a Savior.”[pg 574](c) Shown from the condemnation resting upon all who do not accept Christ.John 3:18—“he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God”;36—“he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him”; Compare1 John 5:19—“the whole world lieth in[i. e., in union with]the evil one”; see Annotated Paragraph Bible,in loco. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 318—“Law requires love to God. This implies love to our neighbor, not only abstaining from all injury to him, but righteousness in all our relations, forgiving instead of requiting, help to enemies as well as friends in all salutary ways, self-discipline, avoidance of all sensuous immoderation, subjection of all sensuous activity as means for spiritual ends in the kingdom of God, and all this, not as a matter of outward conduct merely, but from the heart and as the satisfaction of one's own will and desire. This is the will of God respecting us, which Jesus has revealed and of which he is the example in his life. Instead of this, man universally seeks to promote his own life, pleasure, and honor.”(d) Consistent with those passages which at first sight seem to ascribe to certain men a goodness which renders them acceptable to God, where a closer examination will show that in each case the goodness supposed is a merely imperfect and fancied goodness, a goodness of mere aspiration and impulse due to preliminary workings of God's Spirit, or a goodness resulting from the trust of a conscious sinner in God's method of salvation.InMat 9:12—“They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick”—Jesus means those who in their own esteem are whole;cf.13—“I came not to call the righteous, but sinners”—“if any were truly righteous, they would not need my salvation; if they think themselves so, they will not care to seek it”(An. Par. Bib.). InLuke 10:30-37—the parable of the good Samaritan—Jesus intimates, not that the good Samaritan was not a sinner, but that there were saved sinners outside of the bounds of Israel. InActs 10:35—“in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him”—Peter declares, not that Cornelius was not a sinner, but that God had accepted him through Christ; Cornelius was already justified, but he needed to know (1)thathe was saved, and (2)howhe was saved; and Peter was sent to tell him of the fact, and of the method, of his salvation in Christ. InRom. 2:14—“for when Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law unto themselves”—it is only said that in certain respects the obedience of these Gentiles shows that they have an unwritten law in their hearts; it is not said that they perfectly obey the law and therefore have no sin—for Paul says immediately after (Rom. 3:9)—“we before laid to the charge both of Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin.”So with regard to the words“perfect”and“upright,”as applied to godly men. We shall see, when we come to consider the doctrine of Sanctification, that the word“perfect,”as applied to spiritual conditions already attained, signifies only a relative perfection, equivalent to sincere piety or maturity of Christian judgment, in other words, the perfection of a sinner who has long trusted in Christ, and in whom Christ has overcome his chief defects of character. See1 Cor. 2:6—“we speak wisdom among the perfect”(Am. Rev.:“among them that are full-grown”);Phil. 3:15—“let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded”—i. e., to press toward the goal—a goal expressly said by the apostles to be not yet attained (v. 12-14).“Est deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo.”God is the“spark that fires our clay.”S. S. Times, Sept. 21, 1901:609—“Humanity is better and worse than men have painted it. There has been a kind of theological pessimism in denouncing human sinfulness, which has been blind to the abounding love and patience and courage and fidelity to duty among men.”A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 287-290—“There is a natural life of Christ, and that life pulses and throbs in all men everywhere. All men are created in Christ, before they are recreated in him. The whole race lives, moves, and has its being in him, for he is the soul of its soul and the life of its life.”To Christ then, and not to unaided human nature, we attribute the noble impulses of unregenerate men. These impulses are drawings of his Spirit, moving men to repentance. But they are influences of his grace which, if resisted, leave the soul in more than its original darkness.2.Proof from history, observation, and the common judgment of mankind.(a) History witnesses to the universality of sin, in its accounts of the universal prevalence of priesthood and sacrifice.[pg 575]See references in Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 161-172, 335-339. Baptist Review, 1882:343—“Plutarch speaks of the tear-stained eyes, the pallid and woe-begone countenances which he sees at the public altars, men rolling themselves in the mire and confessing their sins. Among the common people the dull feeling of guilt was too real to be shaken off or laughed away.”(b) Every man knows himself to have come short of moral perfection, and, in proportion to his experience of the world, recognizes the fact that every other man has come short of it also.Chinese proverb:“There are but two good men; one is dead, and the other is not yet born.”Idaho proverb:“The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”But the proverb applies to the white man also. Dr. Jacob Chamberlain, the missionary, said:“I never but once in India heard a man deny that he was a sinner. But once a Brahmin interrupted me and said:‘I deny your premisses. I am not a sinner. I do not need to do better.’For a moment I was abashed. Then I said:‘But what do your neighbors say?’Thereupon one cried out:‘He cheated me in trading horses’; another:‘He defrauded a widow of her inheritance.’The Brahmin went out of the house, and I never saw him again.”A great nephew of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, when a child, wrote in a few lines an“Essay on the Life of Man,”which ran as follows:“A man's life naturally divides itself into three distinct parts: the first when he is contriving and planning all kinds of villainy and rascality,—that is the period of youth and innocence. In the second, he is found putting in practice all the villainy and rascality he has contrived,—that is the flower of mankind and prime of life. The third and last period is that when he is making his soul and preparing for another world,—that is the period of dotage.”(c) The common judgment of mankind declares that there is an element of selfishness in every human heart, and that every man is prone to some form of sin. This common judgment is expressed in the maxims:“No man is perfect”;“Every man has his weak side”, or“his price”; and every great name in literature has attested its truth.Seneca, De Ira, 3:26—“We are all wicked. What one blames in another he will find in his own bosom. We live among the wicked, ourselves being wicked”; Ep., 22—“No one has strength of himself to emerge [from this wickedness]; some one must needs hold forth a hand; some one must draw us out.”Ovid, Met., 7:19—“I see the things that are better and I approve them, yet I follow the worse.... We strive even after that which is forbidden, and we desire the things that are denied.”Cicero:“Nature has given us faint sparks of knowledge; we extinguish them by our immoralities.”Shakespeare, Othello, 3:3—“Where's that palace whereinto foul things Sometimes Intrude not? Who has a breast so pure, But some uncleanly apprehensions keep leets [meetings in court] and law-days, and in sessions sit With meditations lawful?”Henry VI., II:3:3—“Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.”Hamlet, 2:2, compares God's influence to the sun which“breeds maggots in a dead dog, Kissing carrion,”—that is, God is no more responsible for the corruption in man's heart and the evil that comes from it, than the sun is responsible for the maggots which its heat breeds in a dead dog; 3:1—“We are arrant knaves all.”Timon of Athens, 1:2—“Who lives that's not depraved or depraves?”Goethe:“I see no fault committed which I too might not have committed.”Dr. Johnson:“Every man knows that of himself which he dare not tell to his dearest friend.”Thackeray showed himself a master in fiction by having no heroes; the paragons of virtue belonged to a cruder age of romance. So George Eliot represents life correctly by setting before us no perfect characters; all act from mixed motives. Carlyle, hero-worshiper as he was inclined to be, is said to have become disgusted with each of his heroes before he finished his biography. Emerson said that to understand any crime, he had only to look into his own heart. Robert Burns:“God knows I'm no thing I would be, Nor am I even the thing I could be.”Huxley:“The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.”And he speaks of“the infinite wickedness”which has attended the course of human history. Matthew Arnold:“What mortal, when he saw, Life's voyage done, his heavenly Friend, Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly:—I have kept uninfringed[pg 576]my nature's law: The inly written chart thou gavest me, to guide me, I have kept by to the end?”Walter Besant, Children of Gibeon:“The men of ability do not desire a system in which they shall not be able to do good to themselves first.”“Ready to offer praise and prayer on Sunday, if on Monday they may go into the market place to skin their fellows and sell their hides.”Yet Confucius declares that“man is born good.”He confounds conscience with will—thesenseof right with theloveof right. Dean Swift's worthy sought many years for a method of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Human nature of itself is as little able to bear the fruits of God.Every man will grant (1) that he is not perfect in moral character; (2) that love to God has not been the constant motive of his actions,i. e., that he has been to some degree selfish; (3) that he has committed at least one known violation of conscience. Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 86, 87—“Those theorists who reject revealed religion, and remand man to the first principles of ethics and morality as the only religion that he needs, send him to a tribunal that damns him”; for it is simple fact that“no human creature, in any country or grade of civilization, has ever glorified God to the extent of his knowledge of God.”3.Proof from Christian experience.(a) In proportion to his spiritual progress does the Christian recognize evil dispositions within him, which but for divine grace might germinate and bring forth the most various forms of outward transgression.See Goodwin's experience, in Baird, Elohim Revealed, 409; Goodwin, member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, speaking of his conversion, says:“An abundant discovery was made to me of my inward lusts and concupiscence, and I was amazed to see with what greediness I had sought the gratification of every sin.”Töllner's experience, in Martensen's Dogmatics: Töllner, though inclined to Pelagianism, says:“I look into my own heart and I see with penitent sorrow that I must in God's sight accuse myself of all the offences I have named,”—and he had named only deliberate transgressions;—“he who does not allow that he is similarly guilty, let him look deep into his own heart.”John Newton sees the murderer led to execution, and says:“There, but for the grace of God, goes John Newton.”Count de Maistre:“I do not know what the heart of a villain may be—I only know that of a virtuous man, and that is frightful.”Tholuck, on the fiftieth anniversary of his professorship at Halle, said to his students:“In review of God's manifold blessings, the thing I seem most to thank him for is the conviction of sin.”Roper Ascham:“By experience we find out a short way, by a long wandering.”Luke 15:25-32is sometimes referred to as indicating that there are some of God's children who never wander from the Father's house. But there were two prodigals in that family. The elder was a servant in spirit as well as the younger. J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 41, 42—“In the wish of the elder son that he might sometimes feast with his own friends apart from his father, was contained the germ of that desire to escape the wholesome restraints of home which, in its full development, had brought his brother first to riotous living, and afterwards to the service of the stranger and the herding of swine. This root of sin is in us all, but in him it was not so full-grown as to bring death. Yet he says:‘Lo, these many years do I serve thee’(δουλεύω—as a bondservant),‘and I never transgressed a commandment of thine.’Are the father's commandments grievous? Is service true and sincere, without love from the heart? The elder brother was calculating toward his father and unsympathetic toward his brother.”Sir J. R. Seelye, Ecce Homo:“No virtue can be safe, unless it is enthusiastic.”Wordsworth:“Heaven rejects the love Of nicely calculated less or more.”(b) Since those most enlightened by the Holy Spirit recognize themselves as guilty of unnumbered violations of the divine law, the absence of any consciousness of sin on the part of unregenerate men must be regarded as proof that they are blinded by persistent transgression.It is a remarkable fact that, while those who are enlightened by the Holy Spirit and who are actually overcoming their sins see more and more of the evil of their hearts and lives, those who are the slaves of sin see less and less of that evil, and often deny that they are sinners at all. Rousseau, in his Confessions, confesses sin in a spirit which itself needs to be confessed. He glosses over his vices, and magnifies his virtues.“No[pg 577]man,”he says,“can come to the throne of God and say:‘I am a better man than Rousseau.’... Let the trumpet of the last judgment sound when it will: I will present myself before the Sovereign Judge with this book in my hand, and I will say aloud:‘Here is what I did, what I thought, and what I was.’”“Ah,”said he, just before he expired,“how happy a thing it is to die, when one has no reason for remorse or self-reproach!”And then, addressing himself to the Almighty, he said:“Eternal Being, the soul that I am going to give thee back is as pure at this moment as it was when it proceeded from thee; render it a partaker of thy felicity!”Yet, in his boyhood, Rousseau was a petty thief. In his writings, he advocated adultery and suicide. He lived for more than twenty years in practical licentiousness. His children, most of whom, if not all, were illegitimate, he sent off to the foundling hospital as soon as they were born, thus casting them upon the charity of strangers, yet he inflamed the mothers of France with his eloquent appeals to them to nurse their own babies. He was mean, vacillating, treacherous, hypocritical, and blasphemous. And in his Confessions, he rehearses the exciting scenes of his life in the spirit of the bold adventurer. See N. M. Williams, in Bap. Review, art.: Rousseau, from which the substance of the above is taken.Edwin Forrest, when accused of being converted in a religious revival, wrote an indignant denial to the public press, saying that he had nothing to regret; his sins were those of omission rather than commission; he had always acted upon the principle of loving his friends and hating his enemies; and trusting in the justice as well as the mercy of God, he hoped, when he left this earthly sphere, to“wrap the drapery of his couch about him, and lie down to pleasant dreams.”And yet no man of his time was more arrogant, self-sufficient, licentious, revengeful. John Y. McCane, when sentenced to Sing Sing prison for six years for violating the election laws by the most highhanded bribery and ballot-stuffing, declared that he had never done anything wrong in his life. He was a Sunday School Superintendent, moreover. A lady who lived to the age of 92, protested that, if she had her whole life to live over again, she would not alter a single thing. Lord Nelson, after he had received his death wound at Trafalgar, said:“I have never been a great sinner.”Yet at that very time he was living in open adultery. Tennyson, Sea Dreams:“With all his conscience and one eye askew, So false, he partly took himself for true.”Contrast the utterance of the apostle Paul:1 Tim. 1:15—“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”It has been well said that“the greatest of sins is to be conscious of none.”Rowland Hill:“The devil makes little of sin, that he may retain the sinner.”The following reasons may be suggested for men's unconsciousness of their sins: 1. We never know the force of any evil passion or principle within us, until we begin to resist it. 2. God's providential restraints upon sin have hitherto prevented its full development. 3. God's judgments against sin have not yet been made manifest. 4. Sin itself has a blinding influence upon the mind. 5. Only he who has been saved from the penalty of sin is willing to look into the abyss from which he has been rescued.—That a man is unconscious of any sin is therefore only proof that he is a great and hardened transgressor. This is also the most hopeless feature of his case, since for one who never realizes his sin there is no salvation. In the light of this truth, we see the amazing grace of God, not only in the gift of Christ to die for sinners, but in the gift of the Holy Spirit to convince men of their sins and to lead them to accept the Savior.Ps. 90:8—“Thou hast set ... Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance”= man's inner sinfulness is hidden from himself, until it is contrasted with the holiness of God. Light = a luminary or sun, which shines down into the depths of the heart and brings out its hidden evil into painful relief. See Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:248-259; Edwards, Works, 2:326; John Caird, Reasons for Men's Unconsciousness of their Sins, in Sermons, 33.
Section III.—Universality Of Sin.We have shown that sin is a state, a state of the will, a selfish state of the will. We now proceed to show that this selfish state of the will is universal. We divide our proof into two parts. In the first, we regard sin in its aspect as conscious violation of law; in the second, in its aspect as a bias of the nature to evil, prior to or underlying consciousness.I. Every human being who has arrived at moral consciousness has committed acts, or cherished dispositions, contrary to the divine law.1.Proof from Scripture.The universality of transgression is:(a) Set forth in direct statements of Scripture.1 K. 8:46—“there is no man that sinneth not”;Ps. 143:2—“enter not into judgment with thy servant; For in thy sight no man living is righteous”;Prov. 20:9—“Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?”;Eccl. 7:20—“Surely there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not”;Luke 11:13—“If ye, then, being evil”;Rom. 3:10, 12—“There is none righteous, no, not one.... There is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one”;19, 20—“that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of God: because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight; for through the law cometh the knowledge of sin”;23—“for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God”;Gal. 3:22—“the scripture shut up all things under sin”;James 3:2—“For in many things we all stumble”;1 John 1:8—“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”CompareMat. 6:12—“forgive us our debts”—given as a prayer for all men;14—“if ye forgive men their trespasses”—the condition of our own forgiveness.(b) Implied in declarations of the universal need of atonement, regeneration, and repentance.Universal need of atonement:Mark 16:16—“He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved”(Mark 16:9-20, though probably not written by Mark, is nevertheless of canonical authority);John 3:16—“God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish”;6:50—“This is the bread which cometh down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die”;12:47—“I came not to judge the world, but to save the world”;Acts 4:12—“in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved.”Universal need of regeneration:John 3:3, 5—“Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.... Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”Universal need of repentance:Acts 17:30—“commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent.”Yet Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, in her“Unity of Good,”speaks of“the illusion which calls sin real and man a sinner needing a Savior.”[pg 574](c) Shown from the condemnation resting upon all who do not accept Christ.John 3:18—“he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God”;36—“he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him”; Compare1 John 5:19—“the whole world lieth in[i. e., in union with]the evil one”; see Annotated Paragraph Bible,in loco. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 318—“Law requires love to God. This implies love to our neighbor, not only abstaining from all injury to him, but righteousness in all our relations, forgiving instead of requiting, help to enemies as well as friends in all salutary ways, self-discipline, avoidance of all sensuous immoderation, subjection of all sensuous activity as means for spiritual ends in the kingdom of God, and all this, not as a matter of outward conduct merely, but from the heart and as the satisfaction of one's own will and desire. This is the will of God respecting us, which Jesus has revealed and of which he is the example in his life. Instead of this, man universally seeks to promote his own life, pleasure, and honor.”(d) Consistent with those passages which at first sight seem to ascribe to certain men a goodness which renders them acceptable to God, where a closer examination will show that in each case the goodness supposed is a merely imperfect and fancied goodness, a goodness of mere aspiration and impulse due to preliminary workings of God's Spirit, or a goodness resulting from the trust of a conscious sinner in God's method of salvation.InMat 9:12—“They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick”—Jesus means those who in their own esteem are whole;cf.13—“I came not to call the righteous, but sinners”—“if any were truly righteous, they would not need my salvation; if they think themselves so, they will not care to seek it”(An. Par. Bib.). InLuke 10:30-37—the parable of the good Samaritan—Jesus intimates, not that the good Samaritan was not a sinner, but that there were saved sinners outside of the bounds of Israel. InActs 10:35—“in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him”—Peter declares, not that Cornelius was not a sinner, but that God had accepted him through Christ; Cornelius was already justified, but he needed to know (1)thathe was saved, and (2)howhe was saved; and Peter was sent to tell him of the fact, and of the method, of his salvation in Christ. InRom. 2:14—“for when Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law unto themselves”—it is only said that in certain respects the obedience of these Gentiles shows that they have an unwritten law in their hearts; it is not said that they perfectly obey the law and therefore have no sin—for Paul says immediately after (Rom. 3:9)—“we before laid to the charge both of Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin.”So with regard to the words“perfect”and“upright,”as applied to godly men. We shall see, when we come to consider the doctrine of Sanctification, that the word“perfect,”as applied to spiritual conditions already attained, signifies only a relative perfection, equivalent to sincere piety or maturity of Christian judgment, in other words, the perfection of a sinner who has long trusted in Christ, and in whom Christ has overcome his chief defects of character. See1 Cor. 2:6—“we speak wisdom among the perfect”(Am. Rev.:“among them that are full-grown”);Phil. 3:15—“let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded”—i. e., to press toward the goal—a goal expressly said by the apostles to be not yet attained (v. 12-14).“Est deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo.”God is the“spark that fires our clay.”S. S. Times, Sept. 21, 1901:609—“Humanity is better and worse than men have painted it. There has been a kind of theological pessimism in denouncing human sinfulness, which has been blind to the abounding love and patience and courage and fidelity to duty among men.”A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 287-290—“There is a natural life of Christ, and that life pulses and throbs in all men everywhere. All men are created in Christ, before they are recreated in him. The whole race lives, moves, and has its being in him, for he is the soul of its soul and the life of its life.”To Christ then, and not to unaided human nature, we attribute the noble impulses of unregenerate men. These impulses are drawings of his Spirit, moving men to repentance. But they are influences of his grace which, if resisted, leave the soul in more than its original darkness.2.Proof from history, observation, and the common judgment of mankind.(a) History witnesses to the universality of sin, in its accounts of the universal prevalence of priesthood and sacrifice.[pg 575]See references in Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 161-172, 335-339. Baptist Review, 1882:343—“Plutarch speaks of the tear-stained eyes, the pallid and woe-begone countenances which he sees at the public altars, men rolling themselves in the mire and confessing their sins. Among the common people the dull feeling of guilt was too real to be shaken off or laughed away.”(b) Every man knows himself to have come short of moral perfection, and, in proportion to his experience of the world, recognizes the fact that every other man has come short of it also.Chinese proverb:“There are but two good men; one is dead, and the other is not yet born.”Idaho proverb:“The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”But the proverb applies to the white man also. Dr. Jacob Chamberlain, the missionary, said:“I never but once in India heard a man deny that he was a sinner. But once a Brahmin interrupted me and said:‘I deny your premisses. I am not a sinner. I do not need to do better.’For a moment I was abashed. Then I said:‘But what do your neighbors say?’Thereupon one cried out:‘He cheated me in trading horses’; another:‘He defrauded a widow of her inheritance.’The Brahmin went out of the house, and I never saw him again.”A great nephew of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, when a child, wrote in a few lines an“Essay on the Life of Man,”which ran as follows:“A man's life naturally divides itself into three distinct parts: the first when he is contriving and planning all kinds of villainy and rascality,—that is the period of youth and innocence. In the second, he is found putting in practice all the villainy and rascality he has contrived,—that is the flower of mankind and prime of life. The third and last period is that when he is making his soul and preparing for another world,—that is the period of dotage.”(c) The common judgment of mankind declares that there is an element of selfishness in every human heart, and that every man is prone to some form of sin. This common judgment is expressed in the maxims:“No man is perfect”;“Every man has his weak side”, or“his price”; and every great name in literature has attested its truth.Seneca, De Ira, 3:26—“We are all wicked. What one blames in another he will find in his own bosom. We live among the wicked, ourselves being wicked”; Ep., 22—“No one has strength of himself to emerge [from this wickedness]; some one must needs hold forth a hand; some one must draw us out.”Ovid, Met., 7:19—“I see the things that are better and I approve them, yet I follow the worse.... We strive even after that which is forbidden, and we desire the things that are denied.”Cicero:“Nature has given us faint sparks of knowledge; we extinguish them by our immoralities.”Shakespeare, Othello, 3:3—“Where's that palace whereinto foul things Sometimes Intrude not? Who has a breast so pure, But some uncleanly apprehensions keep leets [meetings in court] and law-days, and in sessions sit With meditations lawful?”Henry VI., II:3:3—“Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.”Hamlet, 2:2, compares God's influence to the sun which“breeds maggots in a dead dog, Kissing carrion,”—that is, God is no more responsible for the corruption in man's heart and the evil that comes from it, than the sun is responsible for the maggots which its heat breeds in a dead dog; 3:1—“We are arrant knaves all.”Timon of Athens, 1:2—“Who lives that's not depraved or depraves?”Goethe:“I see no fault committed which I too might not have committed.”Dr. Johnson:“Every man knows that of himself which he dare not tell to his dearest friend.”Thackeray showed himself a master in fiction by having no heroes; the paragons of virtue belonged to a cruder age of romance. So George Eliot represents life correctly by setting before us no perfect characters; all act from mixed motives. Carlyle, hero-worshiper as he was inclined to be, is said to have become disgusted with each of his heroes before he finished his biography. Emerson said that to understand any crime, he had only to look into his own heart. Robert Burns:“God knows I'm no thing I would be, Nor am I even the thing I could be.”Huxley:“The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.”And he speaks of“the infinite wickedness”which has attended the course of human history. Matthew Arnold:“What mortal, when he saw, Life's voyage done, his heavenly Friend, Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly:—I have kept uninfringed[pg 576]my nature's law: The inly written chart thou gavest me, to guide me, I have kept by to the end?”Walter Besant, Children of Gibeon:“The men of ability do not desire a system in which they shall not be able to do good to themselves first.”“Ready to offer praise and prayer on Sunday, if on Monday they may go into the market place to skin their fellows and sell their hides.”Yet Confucius declares that“man is born good.”He confounds conscience with will—thesenseof right with theloveof right. Dean Swift's worthy sought many years for a method of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Human nature of itself is as little able to bear the fruits of God.Every man will grant (1) that he is not perfect in moral character; (2) that love to God has not been the constant motive of his actions,i. e., that he has been to some degree selfish; (3) that he has committed at least one known violation of conscience. Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 86, 87—“Those theorists who reject revealed religion, and remand man to the first principles of ethics and morality as the only religion that he needs, send him to a tribunal that damns him”; for it is simple fact that“no human creature, in any country or grade of civilization, has ever glorified God to the extent of his knowledge of God.”3.Proof from Christian experience.(a) In proportion to his spiritual progress does the Christian recognize evil dispositions within him, which but for divine grace might germinate and bring forth the most various forms of outward transgression.See Goodwin's experience, in Baird, Elohim Revealed, 409; Goodwin, member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, speaking of his conversion, says:“An abundant discovery was made to me of my inward lusts and concupiscence, and I was amazed to see with what greediness I had sought the gratification of every sin.”Töllner's experience, in Martensen's Dogmatics: Töllner, though inclined to Pelagianism, says:“I look into my own heart and I see with penitent sorrow that I must in God's sight accuse myself of all the offences I have named,”—and he had named only deliberate transgressions;—“he who does not allow that he is similarly guilty, let him look deep into his own heart.”John Newton sees the murderer led to execution, and says:“There, but for the grace of God, goes John Newton.”Count de Maistre:“I do not know what the heart of a villain may be—I only know that of a virtuous man, and that is frightful.”Tholuck, on the fiftieth anniversary of his professorship at Halle, said to his students:“In review of God's manifold blessings, the thing I seem most to thank him for is the conviction of sin.”Roper Ascham:“By experience we find out a short way, by a long wandering.”Luke 15:25-32is sometimes referred to as indicating that there are some of God's children who never wander from the Father's house. But there were two prodigals in that family. The elder was a servant in spirit as well as the younger. J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 41, 42—“In the wish of the elder son that he might sometimes feast with his own friends apart from his father, was contained the germ of that desire to escape the wholesome restraints of home which, in its full development, had brought his brother first to riotous living, and afterwards to the service of the stranger and the herding of swine. This root of sin is in us all, but in him it was not so full-grown as to bring death. Yet he says:‘Lo, these many years do I serve thee’(δουλεύω—as a bondservant),‘and I never transgressed a commandment of thine.’Are the father's commandments grievous? Is service true and sincere, without love from the heart? The elder brother was calculating toward his father and unsympathetic toward his brother.”Sir J. R. Seelye, Ecce Homo:“No virtue can be safe, unless it is enthusiastic.”Wordsworth:“Heaven rejects the love Of nicely calculated less or more.”(b) Since those most enlightened by the Holy Spirit recognize themselves as guilty of unnumbered violations of the divine law, the absence of any consciousness of sin on the part of unregenerate men must be regarded as proof that they are blinded by persistent transgression.It is a remarkable fact that, while those who are enlightened by the Holy Spirit and who are actually overcoming their sins see more and more of the evil of their hearts and lives, those who are the slaves of sin see less and less of that evil, and often deny that they are sinners at all. Rousseau, in his Confessions, confesses sin in a spirit which itself needs to be confessed. He glosses over his vices, and magnifies his virtues.“No[pg 577]man,”he says,“can come to the throne of God and say:‘I am a better man than Rousseau.’... Let the trumpet of the last judgment sound when it will: I will present myself before the Sovereign Judge with this book in my hand, and I will say aloud:‘Here is what I did, what I thought, and what I was.’”“Ah,”said he, just before he expired,“how happy a thing it is to die, when one has no reason for remorse or self-reproach!”And then, addressing himself to the Almighty, he said:“Eternal Being, the soul that I am going to give thee back is as pure at this moment as it was when it proceeded from thee; render it a partaker of thy felicity!”Yet, in his boyhood, Rousseau was a petty thief. In his writings, he advocated adultery and suicide. He lived for more than twenty years in practical licentiousness. His children, most of whom, if not all, were illegitimate, he sent off to the foundling hospital as soon as they were born, thus casting them upon the charity of strangers, yet he inflamed the mothers of France with his eloquent appeals to them to nurse their own babies. He was mean, vacillating, treacherous, hypocritical, and blasphemous. And in his Confessions, he rehearses the exciting scenes of his life in the spirit of the bold adventurer. See N. M. Williams, in Bap. Review, art.: Rousseau, from which the substance of the above is taken.Edwin Forrest, when accused of being converted in a religious revival, wrote an indignant denial to the public press, saying that he had nothing to regret; his sins were those of omission rather than commission; he had always acted upon the principle of loving his friends and hating his enemies; and trusting in the justice as well as the mercy of God, he hoped, when he left this earthly sphere, to“wrap the drapery of his couch about him, and lie down to pleasant dreams.”And yet no man of his time was more arrogant, self-sufficient, licentious, revengeful. John Y. McCane, when sentenced to Sing Sing prison for six years for violating the election laws by the most highhanded bribery and ballot-stuffing, declared that he had never done anything wrong in his life. He was a Sunday School Superintendent, moreover. A lady who lived to the age of 92, protested that, if she had her whole life to live over again, she would not alter a single thing. Lord Nelson, after he had received his death wound at Trafalgar, said:“I have never been a great sinner.”Yet at that very time he was living in open adultery. Tennyson, Sea Dreams:“With all his conscience and one eye askew, So false, he partly took himself for true.”Contrast the utterance of the apostle Paul:1 Tim. 1:15—“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”It has been well said that“the greatest of sins is to be conscious of none.”Rowland Hill:“The devil makes little of sin, that he may retain the sinner.”The following reasons may be suggested for men's unconsciousness of their sins: 1. We never know the force of any evil passion or principle within us, until we begin to resist it. 2. God's providential restraints upon sin have hitherto prevented its full development. 3. God's judgments against sin have not yet been made manifest. 4. Sin itself has a blinding influence upon the mind. 5. Only he who has been saved from the penalty of sin is willing to look into the abyss from which he has been rescued.—That a man is unconscious of any sin is therefore only proof that he is a great and hardened transgressor. This is also the most hopeless feature of his case, since for one who never realizes his sin there is no salvation. In the light of this truth, we see the amazing grace of God, not only in the gift of Christ to die for sinners, but in the gift of the Holy Spirit to convince men of their sins and to lead them to accept the Savior.Ps. 90:8—“Thou hast set ... Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance”= man's inner sinfulness is hidden from himself, until it is contrasted with the holiness of God. Light = a luminary or sun, which shines down into the depths of the heart and brings out its hidden evil into painful relief. See Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:248-259; Edwards, Works, 2:326; John Caird, Reasons for Men's Unconsciousness of their Sins, in Sermons, 33.
Section III.—Universality Of Sin.We have shown that sin is a state, a state of the will, a selfish state of the will. We now proceed to show that this selfish state of the will is universal. We divide our proof into two parts. In the first, we regard sin in its aspect as conscious violation of law; in the second, in its aspect as a bias of the nature to evil, prior to or underlying consciousness.I. Every human being who has arrived at moral consciousness has committed acts, or cherished dispositions, contrary to the divine law.1.Proof from Scripture.The universality of transgression is:(a) Set forth in direct statements of Scripture.1 K. 8:46—“there is no man that sinneth not”;Ps. 143:2—“enter not into judgment with thy servant; For in thy sight no man living is righteous”;Prov. 20:9—“Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?”;Eccl. 7:20—“Surely there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not”;Luke 11:13—“If ye, then, being evil”;Rom. 3:10, 12—“There is none righteous, no, not one.... There is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one”;19, 20—“that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of God: because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight; for through the law cometh the knowledge of sin”;23—“for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God”;Gal. 3:22—“the scripture shut up all things under sin”;James 3:2—“For in many things we all stumble”;1 John 1:8—“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”CompareMat. 6:12—“forgive us our debts”—given as a prayer for all men;14—“if ye forgive men their trespasses”—the condition of our own forgiveness.(b) Implied in declarations of the universal need of atonement, regeneration, and repentance.Universal need of atonement:Mark 16:16—“He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved”(Mark 16:9-20, though probably not written by Mark, is nevertheless of canonical authority);John 3:16—“God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish”;6:50—“This is the bread which cometh down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die”;12:47—“I came not to judge the world, but to save the world”;Acts 4:12—“in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved.”Universal need of regeneration:John 3:3, 5—“Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.... Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”Universal need of repentance:Acts 17:30—“commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent.”Yet Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, in her“Unity of Good,”speaks of“the illusion which calls sin real and man a sinner needing a Savior.”[pg 574](c) Shown from the condemnation resting upon all who do not accept Christ.John 3:18—“he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God”;36—“he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him”; Compare1 John 5:19—“the whole world lieth in[i. e., in union with]the evil one”; see Annotated Paragraph Bible,in loco. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 318—“Law requires love to God. This implies love to our neighbor, not only abstaining from all injury to him, but righteousness in all our relations, forgiving instead of requiting, help to enemies as well as friends in all salutary ways, self-discipline, avoidance of all sensuous immoderation, subjection of all sensuous activity as means for spiritual ends in the kingdom of God, and all this, not as a matter of outward conduct merely, but from the heart and as the satisfaction of one's own will and desire. This is the will of God respecting us, which Jesus has revealed and of which he is the example in his life. Instead of this, man universally seeks to promote his own life, pleasure, and honor.”(d) Consistent with those passages which at first sight seem to ascribe to certain men a goodness which renders them acceptable to God, where a closer examination will show that in each case the goodness supposed is a merely imperfect and fancied goodness, a goodness of mere aspiration and impulse due to preliminary workings of God's Spirit, or a goodness resulting from the trust of a conscious sinner in God's method of salvation.InMat 9:12—“They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick”—Jesus means those who in their own esteem are whole;cf.13—“I came not to call the righteous, but sinners”—“if any were truly righteous, they would not need my salvation; if they think themselves so, they will not care to seek it”(An. Par. Bib.). InLuke 10:30-37—the parable of the good Samaritan—Jesus intimates, not that the good Samaritan was not a sinner, but that there were saved sinners outside of the bounds of Israel. InActs 10:35—“in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him”—Peter declares, not that Cornelius was not a sinner, but that God had accepted him through Christ; Cornelius was already justified, but he needed to know (1)thathe was saved, and (2)howhe was saved; and Peter was sent to tell him of the fact, and of the method, of his salvation in Christ. InRom. 2:14—“for when Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law unto themselves”—it is only said that in certain respects the obedience of these Gentiles shows that they have an unwritten law in their hearts; it is not said that they perfectly obey the law and therefore have no sin—for Paul says immediately after (Rom. 3:9)—“we before laid to the charge both of Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin.”So with regard to the words“perfect”and“upright,”as applied to godly men. We shall see, when we come to consider the doctrine of Sanctification, that the word“perfect,”as applied to spiritual conditions already attained, signifies only a relative perfection, equivalent to sincere piety or maturity of Christian judgment, in other words, the perfection of a sinner who has long trusted in Christ, and in whom Christ has overcome his chief defects of character. See1 Cor. 2:6—“we speak wisdom among the perfect”(Am. Rev.:“among them that are full-grown”);Phil. 3:15—“let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded”—i. e., to press toward the goal—a goal expressly said by the apostles to be not yet attained (v. 12-14).“Est deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo.”God is the“spark that fires our clay.”S. S. Times, Sept. 21, 1901:609—“Humanity is better and worse than men have painted it. There has been a kind of theological pessimism in denouncing human sinfulness, which has been blind to the abounding love and patience and courage and fidelity to duty among men.”A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 287-290—“There is a natural life of Christ, and that life pulses and throbs in all men everywhere. All men are created in Christ, before they are recreated in him. The whole race lives, moves, and has its being in him, for he is the soul of its soul and the life of its life.”To Christ then, and not to unaided human nature, we attribute the noble impulses of unregenerate men. These impulses are drawings of his Spirit, moving men to repentance. But they are influences of his grace which, if resisted, leave the soul in more than its original darkness.2.Proof from history, observation, and the common judgment of mankind.(a) History witnesses to the universality of sin, in its accounts of the universal prevalence of priesthood and sacrifice.[pg 575]See references in Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 161-172, 335-339. Baptist Review, 1882:343—“Plutarch speaks of the tear-stained eyes, the pallid and woe-begone countenances which he sees at the public altars, men rolling themselves in the mire and confessing their sins. Among the common people the dull feeling of guilt was too real to be shaken off or laughed away.”(b) Every man knows himself to have come short of moral perfection, and, in proportion to his experience of the world, recognizes the fact that every other man has come short of it also.Chinese proverb:“There are but two good men; one is dead, and the other is not yet born.”Idaho proverb:“The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”But the proverb applies to the white man also. Dr. Jacob Chamberlain, the missionary, said:“I never but once in India heard a man deny that he was a sinner. But once a Brahmin interrupted me and said:‘I deny your premisses. I am not a sinner. I do not need to do better.’For a moment I was abashed. Then I said:‘But what do your neighbors say?’Thereupon one cried out:‘He cheated me in trading horses’; another:‘He defrauded a widow of her inheritance.’The Brahmin went out of the house, and I never saw him again.”A great nephew of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, when a child, wrote in a few lines an“Essay on the Life of Man,”which ran as follows:“A man's life naturally divides itself into three distinct parts: the first when he is contriving and planning all kinds of villainy and rascality,—that is the period of youth and innocence. In the second, he is found putting in practice all the villainy and rascality he has contrived,—that is the flower of mankind and prime of life. The third and last period is that when he is making his soul and preparing for another world,—that is the period of dotage.”(c) The common judgment of mankind declares that there is an element of selfishness in every human heart, and that every man is prone to some form of sin. This common judgment is expressed in the maxims:“No man is perfect”;“Every man has his weak side”, or“his price”; and every great name in literature has attested its truth.Seneca, De Ira, 3:26—“We are all wicked. What one blames in another he will find in his own bosom. We live among the wicked, ourselves being wicked”; Ep., 22—“No one has strength of himself to emerge [from this wickedness]; some one must needs hold forth a hand; some one must draw us out.”Ovid, Met., 7:19—“I see the things that are better and I approve them, yet I follow the worse.... We strive even after that which is forbidden, and we desire the things that are denied.”Cicero:“Nature has given us faint sparks of knowledge; we extinguish them by our immoralities.”Shakespeare, Othello, 3:3—“Where's that palace whereinto foul things Sometimes Intrude not? Who has a breast so pure, But some uncleanly apprehensions keep leets [meetings in court] and law-days, and in sessions sit With meditations lawful?”Henry VI., II:3:3—“Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.”Hamlet, 2:2, compares God's influence to the sun which“breeds maggots in a dead dog, Kissing carrion,”—that is, God is no more responsible for the corruption in man's heart and the evil that comes from it, than the sun is responsible for the maggots which its heat breeds in a dead dog; 3:1—“We are arrant knaves all.”Timon of Athens, 1:2—“Who lives that's not depraved or depraves?”Goethe:“I see no fault committed which I too might not have committed.”Dr. Johnson:“Every man knows that of himself which he dare not tell to his dearest friend.”Thackeray showed himself a master in fiction by having no heroes; the paragons of virtue belonged to a cruder age of romance. So George Eliot represents life correctly by setting before us no perfect characters; all act from mixed motives. Carlyle, hero-worshiper as he was inclined to be, is said to have become disgusted with each of his heroes before he finished his biography. Emerson said that to understand any crime, he had only to look into his own heart. Robert Burns:“God knows I'm no thing I would be, Nor am I even the thing I could be.”Huxley:“The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.”And he speaks of“the infinite wickedness”which has attended the course of human history. Matthew Arnold:“What mortal, when he saw, Life's voyage done, his heavenly Friend, Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly:—I have kept uninfringed[pg 576]my nature's law: The inly written chart thou gavest me, to guide me, I have kept by to the end?”Walter Besant, Children of Gibeon:“The men of ability do not desire a system in which they shall not be able to do good to themselves first.”“Ready to offer praise and prayer on Sunday, if on Monday they may go into the market place to skin their fellows and sell their hides.”Yet Confucius declares that“man is born good.”He confounds conscience with will—thesenseof right with theloveof right. Dean Swift's worthy sought many years for a method of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Human nature of itself is as little able to bear the fruits of God.Every man will grant (1) that he is not perfect in moral character; (2) that love to God has not been the constant motive of his actions,i. e., that he has been to some degree selfish; (3) that he has committed at least one known violation of conscience. Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 86, 87—“Those theorists who reject revealed religion, and remand man to the first principles of ethics and morality as the only religion that he needs, send him to a tribunal that damns him”; for it is simple fact that“no human creature, in any country or grade of civilization, has ever glorified God to the extent of his knowledge of God.”3.Proof from Christian experience.(a) In proportion to his spiritual progress does the Christian recognize evil dispositions within him, which but for divine grace might germinate and bring forth the most various forms of outward transgression.See Goodwin's experience, in Baird, Elohim Revealed, 409; Goodwin, member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, speaking of his conversion, says:“An abundant discovery was made to me of my inward lusts and concupiscence, and I was amazed to see with what greediness I had sought the gratification of every sin.”Töllner's experience, in Martensen's Dogmatics: Töllner, though inclined to Pelagianism, says:“I look into my own heart and I see with penitent sorrow that I must in God's sight accuse myself of all the offences I have named,”—and he had named only deliberate transgressions;—“he who does not allow that he is similarly guilty, let him look deep into his own heart.”John Newton sees the murderer led to execution, and says:“There, but for the grace of God, goes John Newton.”Count de Maistre:“I do not know what the heart of a villain may be—I only know that of a virtuous man, and that is frightful.”Tholuck, on the fiftieth anniversary of his professorship at Halle, said to his students:“In review of God's manifold blessings, the thing I seem most to thank him for is the conviction of sin.”Roper Ascham:“By experience we find out a short way, by a long wandering.”Luke 15:25-32is sometimes referred to as indicating that there are some of God's children who never wander from the Father's house. But there were two prodigals in that family. The elder was a servant in spirit as well as the younger. J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 41, 42—“In the wish of the elder son that he might sometimes feast with his own friends apart from his father, was contained the germ of that desire to escape the wholesome restraints of home which, in its full development, had brought his brother first to riotous living, and afterwards to the service of the stranger and the herding of swine. This root of sin is in us all, but in him it was not so full-grown as to bring death. Yet he says:‘Lo, these many years do I serve thee’(δουλεύω—as a bondservant),‘and I never transgressed a commandment of thine.’Are the father's commandments grievous? Is service true and sincere, without love from the heart? The elder brother was calculating toward his father and unsympathetic toward his brother.”Sir J. R. Seelye, Ecce Homo:“No virtue can be safe, unless it is enthusiastic.”Wordsworth:“Heaven rejects the love Of nicely calculated less or more.”(b) Since those most enlightened by the Holy Spirit recognize themselves as guilty of unnumbered violations of the divine law, the absence of any consciousness of sin on the part of unregenerate men must be regarded as proof that they are blinded by persistent transgression.It is a remarkable fact that, while those who are enlightened by the Holy Spirit and who are actually overcoming their sins see more and more of the evil of their hearts and lives, those who are the slaves of sin see less and less of that evil, and often deny that they are sinners at all. Rousseau, in his Confessions, confesses sin in a spirit which itself needs to be confessed. He glosses over his vices, and magnifies his virtues.“No[pg 577]man,”he says,“can come to the throne of God and say:‘I am a better man than Rousseau.’... Let the trumpet of the last judgment sound when it will: I will present myself before the Sovereign Judge with this book in my hand, and I will say aloud:‘Here is what I did, what I thought, and what I was.’”“Ah,”said he, just before he expired,“how happy a thing it is to die, when one has no reason for remorse or self-reproach!”And then, addressing himself to the Almighty, he said:“Eternal Being, the soul that I am going to give thee back is as pure at this moment as it was when it proceeded from thee; render it a partaker of thy felicity!”Yet, in his boyhood, Rousseau was a petty thief. In his writings, he advocated adultery and suicide. He lived for more than twenty years in practical licentiousness. His children, most of whom, if not all, were illegitimate, he sent off to the foundling hospital as soon as they were born, thus casting them upon the charity of strangers, yet he inflamed the mothers of France with his eloquent appeals to them to nurse their own babies. He was mean, vacillating, treacherous, hypocritical, and blasphemous. And in his Confessions, he rehearses the exciting scenes of his life in the spirit of the bold adventurer. See N. M. Williams, in Bap. Review, art.: Rousseau, from which the substance of the above is taken.Edwin Forrest, when accused of being converted in a religious revival, wrote an indignant denial to the public press, saying that he had nothing to regret; his sins were those of omission rather than commission; he had always acted upon the principle of loving his friends and hating his enemies; and trusting in the justice as well as the mercy of God, he hoped, when he left this earthly sphere, to“wrap the drapery of his couch about him, and lie down to pleasant dreams.”And yet no man of his time was more arrogant, self-sufficient, licentious, revengeful. John Y. McCane, when sentenced to Sing Sing prison for six years for violating the election laws by the most highhanded bribery and ballot-stuffing, declared that he had never done anything wrong in his life. He was a Sunday School Superintendent, moreover. A lady who lived to the age of 92, protested that, if she had her whole life to live over again, she would not alter a single thing. Lord Nelson, after he had received his death wound at Trafalgar, said:“I have never been a great sinner.”Yet at that very time he was living in open adultery. Tennyson, Sea Dreams:“With all his conscience and one eye askew, So false, he partly took himself for true.”Contrast the utterance of the apostle Paul:1 Tim. 1:15—“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”It has been well said that“the greatest of sins is to be conscious of none.”Rowland Hill:“The devil makes little of sin, that he may retain the sinner.”The following reasons may be suggested for men's unconsciousness of their sins: 1. We never know the force of any evil passion or principle within us, until we begin to resist it. 2. God's providential restraints upon sin have hitherto prevented its full development. 3. God's judgments against sin have not yet been made manifest. 4. Sin itself has a blinding influence upon the mind. 5. Only he who has been saved from the penalty of sin is willing to look into the abyss from which he has been rescued.—That a man is unconscious of any sin is therefore only proof that he is a great and hardened transgressor. This is also the most hopeless feature of his case, since for one who never realizes his sin there is no salvation. In the light of this truth, we see the amazing grace of God, not only in the gift of Christ to die for sinners, but in the gift of the Holy Spirit to convince men of their sins and to lead them to accept the Savior.Ps. 90:8—“Thou hast set ... Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance”= man's inner sinfulness is hidden from himself, until it is contrasted with the holiness of God. Light = a luminary or sun, which shines down into the depths of the heart and brings out its hidden evil into painful relief. See Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:248-259; Edwards, Works, 2:326; John Caird, Reasons for Men's Unconsciousness of their Sins, in Sermons, 33.
Section III.—Universality Of Sin.We have shown that sin is a state, a state of the will, a selfish state of the will. We now proceed to show that this selfish state of the will is universal. We divide our proof into two parts. In the first, we regard sin in its aspect as conscious violation of law; in the second, in its aspect as a bias of the nature to evil, prior to or underlying consciousness.I. Every human being who has arrived at moral consciousness has committed acts, or cherished dispositions, contrary to the divine law.1.Proof from Scripture.The universality of transgression is:(a) Set forth in direct statements of Scripture.1 K. 8:46—“there is no man that sinneth not”;Ps. 143:2—“enter not into judgment with thy servant; For in thy sight no man living is righteous”;Prov. 20:9—“Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?”;Eccl. 7:20—“Surely there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not”;Luke 11:13—“If ye, then, being evil”;Rom. 3:10, 12—“There is none righteous, no, not one.... There is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one”;19, 20—“that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of God: because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight; for through the law cometh the knowledge of sin”;23—“for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God”;Gal. 3:22—“the scripture shut up all things under sin”;James 3:2—“For in many things we all stumble”;1 John 1:8—“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”CompareMat. 6:12—“forgive us our debts”—given as a prayer for all men;14—“if ye forgive men their trespasses”—the condition of our own forgiveness.(b) Implied in declarations of the universal need of atonement, regeneration, and repentance.Universal need of atonement:Mark 16:16—“He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved”(Mark 16:9-20, though probably not written by Mark, is nevertheless of canonical authority);John 3:16—“God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish”;6:50—“This is the bread which cometh down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die”;12:47—“I came not to judge the world, but to save the world”;Acts 4:12—“in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved.”Universal need of regeneration:John 3:3, 5—“Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.... Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”Universal need of repentance:Acts 17:30—“commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent.”Yet Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, in her“Unity of Good,”speaks of“the illusion which calls sin real and man a sinner needing a Savior.”[pg 574](c) Shown from the condemnation resting upon all who do not accept Christ.John 3:18—“he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God”;36—“he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him”; Compare1 John 5:19—“the whole world lieth in[i. e., in union with]the evil one”; see Annotated Paragraph Bible,in loco. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 318—“Law requires love to God. This implies love to our neighbor, not only abstaining from all injury to him, but righteousness in all our relations, forgiving instead of requiting, help to enemies as well as friends in all salutary ways, self-discipline, avoidance of all sensuous immoderation, subjection of all sensuous activity as means for spiritual ends in the kingdom of God, and all this, not as a matter of outward conduct merely, but from the heart and as the satisfaction of one's own will and desire. This is the will of God respecting us, which Jesus has revealed and of which he is the example in his life. Instead of this, man universally seeks to promote his own life, pleasure, and honor.”(d) Consistent with those passages which at first sight seem to ascribe to certain men a goodness which renders them acceptable to God, where a closer examination will show that in each case the goodness supposed is a merely imperfect and fancied goodness, a goodness of mere aspiration and impulse due to preliminary workings of God's Spirit, or a goodness resulting from the trust of a conscious sinner in God's method of salvation.InMat 9:12—“They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick”—Jesus means those who in their own esteem are whole;cf.13—“I came not to call the righteous, but sinners”—“if any were truly righteous, they would not need my salvation; if they think themselves so, they will not care to seek it”(An. Par. Bib.). InLuke 10:30-37—the parable of the good Samaritan—Jesus intimates, not that the good Samaritan was not a sinner, but that there were saved sinners outside of the bounds of Israel. InActs 10:35—“in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him”—Peter declares, not that Cornelius was not a sinner, but that God had accepted him through Christ; Cornelius was already justified, but he needed to know (1)thathe was saved, and (2)howhe was saved; and Peter was sent to tell him of the fact, and of the method, of his salvation in Christ. InRom. 2:14—“for when Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law unto themselves”—it is only said that in certain respects the obedience of these Gentiles shows that they have an unwritten law in their hearts; it is not said that they perfectly obey the law and therefore have no sin—for Paul says immediately after (Rom. 3:9)—“we before laid to the charge both of Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin.”So with regard to the words“perfect”and“upright,”as applied to godly men. We shall see, when we come to consider the doctrine of Sanctification, that the word“perfect,”as applied to spiritual conditions already attained, signifies only a relative perfection, equivalent to sincere piety or maturity of Christian judgment, in other words, the perfection of a sinner who has long trusted in Christ, and in whom Christ has overcome his chief defects of character. See1 Cor. 2:6—“we speak wisdom among the perfect”(Am. Rev.:“among them that are full-grown”);Phil. 3:15—“let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded”—i. e., to press toward the goal—a goal expressly said by the apostles to be not yet attained (v. 12-14).“Est deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo.”God is the“spark that fires our clay.”S. S. Times, Sept. 21, 1901:609—“Humanity is better and worse than men have painted it. There has been a kind of theological pessimism in denouncing human sinfulness, which has been blind to the abounding love and patience and courage and fidelity to duty among men.”A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 287-290—“There is a natural life of Christ, and that life pulses and throbs in all men everywhere. All men are created in Christ, before they are recreated in him. The whole race lives, moves, and has its being in him, for he is the soul of its soul and the life of its life.”To Christ then, and not to unaided human nature, we attribute the noble impulses of unregenerate men. These impulses are drawings of his Spirit, moving men to repentance. But they are influences of his grace which, if resisted, leave the soul in more than its original darkness.2.Proof from history, observation, and the common judgment of mankind.(a) History witnesses to the universality of sin, in its accounts of the universal prevalence of priesthood and sacrifice.[pg 575]See references in Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 161-172, 335-339. Baptist Review, 1882:343—“Plutarch speaks of the tear-stained eyes, the pallid and woe-begone countenances which he sees at the public altars, men rolling themselves in the mire and confessing their sins. Among the common people the dull feeling of guilt was too real to be shaken off or laughed away.”(b) Every man knows himself to have come short of moral perfection, and, in proportion to his experience of the world, recognizes the fact that every other man has come short of it also.Chinese proverb:“There are but two good men; one is dead, and the other is not yet born.”Idaho proverb:“The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”But the proverb applies to the white man also. Dr. Jacob Chamberlain, the missionary, said:“I never but once in India heard a man deny that he was a sinner. But once a Brahmin interrupted me and said:‘I deny your premisses. I am not a sinner. I do not need to do better.’For a moment I was abashed. Then I said:‘But what do your neighbors say?’Thereupon one cried out:‘He cheated me in trading horses’; another:‘He defrauded a widow of her inheritance.’The Brahmin went out of the house, and I never saw him again.”A great nephew of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, when a child, wrote in a few lines an“Essay on the Life of Man,”which ran as follows:“A man's life naturally divides itself into three distinct parts: the first when he is contriving and planning all kinds of villainy and rascality,—that is the period of youth and innocence. In the second, he is found putting in practice all the villainy and rascality he has contrived,—that is the flower of mankind and prime of life. The third and last period is that when he is making his soul and preparing for another world,—that is the period of dotage.”(c) The common judgment of mankind declares that there is an element of selfishness in every human heart, and that every man is prone to some form of sin. This common judgment is expressed in the maxims:“No man is perfect”;“Every man has his weak side”, or“his price”; and every great name in literature has attested its truth.Seneca, De Ira, 3:26—“We are all wicked. What one blames in another he will find in his own bosom. We live among the wicked, ourselves being wicked”; Ep., 22—“No one has strength of himself to emerge [from this wickedness]; some one must needs hold forth a hand; some one must draw us out.”Ovid, Met., 7:19—“I see the things that are better and I approve them, yet I follow the worse.... We strive even after that which is forbidden, and we desire the things that are denied.”Cicero:“Nature has given us faint sparks of knowledge; we extinguish them by our immoralities.”Shakespeare, Othello, 3:3—“Where's that palace whereinto foul things Sometimes Intrude not? Who has a breast so pure, But some uncleanly apprehensions keep leets [meetings in court] and law-days, and in sessions sit With meditations lawful?”Henry VI., II:3:3—“Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.”Hamlet, 2:2, compares God's influence to the sun which“breeds maggots in a dead dog, Kissing carrion,”—that is, God is no more responsible for the corruption in man's heart and the evil that comes from it, than the sun is responsible for the maggots which its heat breeds in a dead dog; 3:1—“We are arrant knaves all.”Timon of Athens, 1:2—“Who lives that's not depraved or depraves?”Goethe:“I see no fault committed which I too might not have committed.”Dr. Johnson:“Every man knows that of himself which he dare not tell to his dearest friend.”Thackeray showed himself a master in fiction by having no heroes; the paragons of virtue belonged to a cruder age of romance. So George Eliot represents life correctly by setting before us no perfect characters; all act from mixed motives. Carlyle, hero-worshiper as he was inclined to be, is said to have become disgusted with each of his heroes before he finished his biography. Emerson said that to understand any crime, he had only to look into his own heart. Robert Burns:“God knows I'm no thing I would be, Nor am I even the thing I could be.”Huxley:“The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.”And he speaks of“the infinite wickedness”which has attended the course of human history. Matthew Arnold:“What mortal, when he saw, Life's voyage done, his heavenly Friend, Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly:—I have kept uninfringed[pg 576]my nature's law: The inly written chart thou gavest me, to guide me, I have kept by to the end?”Walter Besant, Children of Gibeon:“The men of ability do not desire a system in which they shall not be able to do good to themselves first.”“Ready to offer praise and prayer on Sunday, if on Monday they may go into the market place to skin their fellows and sell their hides.”Yet Confucius declares that“man is born good.”He confounds conscience with will—thesenseof right with theloveof right. Dean Swift's worthy sought many years for a method of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Human nature of itself is as little able to bear the fruits of God.Every man will grant (1) that he is not perfect in moral character; (2) that love to God has not been the constant motive of his actions,i. e., that he has been to some degree selfish; (3) that he has committed at least one known violation of conscience. Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 86, 87—“Those theorists who reject revealed religion, and remand man to the first principles of ethics and morality as the only religion that he needs, send him to a tribunal that damns him”; for it is simple fact that“no human creature, in any country or grade of civilization, has ever glorified God to the extent of his knowledge of God.”3.Proof from Christian experience.(a) In proportion to his spiritual progress does the Christian recognize evil dispositions within him, which but for divine grace might germinate and bring forth the most various forms of outward transgression.See Goodwin's experience, in Baird, Elohim Revealed, 409; Goodwin, member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, speaking of his conversion, says:“An abundant discovery was made to me of my inward lusts and concupiscence, and I was amazed to see with what greediness I had sought the gratification of every sin.”Töllner's experience, in Martensen's Dogmatics: Töllner, though inclined to Pelagianism, says:“I look into my own heart and I see with penitent sorrow that I must in God's sight accuse myself of all the offences I have named,”—and he had named only deliberate transgressions;—“he who does not allow that he is similarly guilty, let him look deep into his own heart.”John Newton sees the murderer led to execution, and says:“There, but for the grace of God, goes John Newton.”Count de Maistre:“I do not know what the heart of a villain may be—I only know that of a virtuous man, and that is frightful.”Tholuck, on the fiftieth anniversary of his professorship at Halle, said to his students:“In review of God's manifold blessings, the thing I seem most to thank him for is the conviction of sin.”Roper Ascham:“By experience we find out a short way, by a long wandering.”Luke 15:25-32is sometimes referred to as indicating that there are some of God's children who never wander from the Father's house. But there were two prodigals in that family. The elder was a servant in spirit as well as the younger. J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 41, 42—“In the wish of the elder son that he might sometimes feast with his own friends apart from his father, was contained the germ of that desire to escape the wholesome restraints of home which, in its full development, had brought his brother first to riotous living, and afterwards to the service of the stranger and the herding of swine. This root of sin is in us all, but in him it was not so full-grown as to bring death. Yet he says:‘Lo, these many years do I serve thee’(δουλεύω—as a bondservant),‘and I never transgressed a commandment of thine.’Are the father's commandments grievous? Is service true and sincere, without love from the heart? The elder brother was calculating toward his father and unsympathetic toward his brother.”Sir J. R. Seelye, Ecce Homo:“No virtue can be safe, unless it is enthusiastic.”Wordsworth:“Heaven rejects the love Of nicely calculated less or more.”(b) Since those most enlightened by the Holy Spirit recognize themselves as guilty of unnumbered violations of the divine law, the absence of any consciousness of sin on the part of unregenerate men must be regarded as proof that they are blinded by persistent transgression.It is a remarkable fact that, while those who are enlightened by the Holy Spirit and who are actually overcoming their sins see more and more of the evil of their hearts and lives, those who are the slaves of sin see less and less of that evil, and often deny that they are sinners at all. Rousseau, in his Confessions, confesses sin in a spirit which itself needs to be confessed. He glosses over his vices, and magnifies his virtues.“No[pg 577]man,”he says,“can come to the throne of God and say:‘I am a better man than Rousseau.’... Let the trumpet of the last judgment sound when it will: I will present myself before the Sovereign Judge with this book in my hand, and I will say aloud:‘Here is what I did, what I thought, and what I was.’”“Ah,”said he, just before he expired,“how happy a thing it is to die, when one has no reason for remorse or self-reproach!”And then, addressing himself to the Almighty, he said:“Eternal Being, the soul that I am going to give thee back is as pure at this moment as it was when it proceeded from thee; render it a partaker of thy felicity!”Yet, in his boyhood, Rousseau was a petty thief. In his writings, he advocated adultery and suicide. He lived for more than twenty years in practical licentiousness. His children, most of whom, if not all, were illegitimate, he sent off to the foundling hospital as soon as they were born, thus casting them upon the charity of strangers, yet he inflamed the mothers of France with his eloquent appeals to them to nurse their own babies. He was mean, vacillating, treacherous, hypocritical, and blasphemous. And in his Confessions, he rehearses the exciting scenes of his life in the spirit of the bold adventurer. See N. M. Williams, in Bap. Review, art.: Rousseau, from which the substance of the above is taken.Edwin Forrest, when accused of being converted in a religious revival, wrote an indignant denial to the public press, saying that he had nothing to regret; his sins were those of omission rather than commission; he had always acted upon the principle of loving his friends and hating his enemies; and trusting in the justice as well as the mercy of God, he hoped, when he left this earthly sphere, to“wrap the drapery of his couch about him, and lie down to pleasant dreams.”And yet no man of his time was more arrogant, self-sufficient, licentious, revengeful. John Y. McCane, when sentenced to Sing Sing prison for six years for violating the election laws by the most highhanded bribery and ballot-stuffing, declared that he had never done anything wrong in his life. He was a Sunday School Superintendent, moreover. A lady who lived to the age of 92, protested that, if she had her whole life to live over again, she would not alter a single thing. Lord Nelson, after he had received his death wound at Trafalgar, said:“I have never been a great sinner.”Yet at that very time he was living in open adultery. Tennyson, Sea Dreams:“With all his conscience and one eye askew, So false, he partly took himself for true.”Contrast the utterance of the apostle Paul:1 Tim. 1:15—“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”It has been well said that“the greatest of sins is to be conscious of none.”Rowland Hill:“The devil makes little of sin, that he may retain the sinner.”The following reasons may be suggested for men's unconsciousness of their sins: 1. We never know the force of any evil passion or principle within us, until we begin to resist it. 2. God's providential restraints upon sin have hitherto prevented its full development. 3. God's judgments against sin have not yet been made manifest. 4. Sin itself has a blinding influence upon the mind. 5. Only he who has been saved from the penalty of sin is willing to look into the abyss from which he has been rescued.—That a man is unconscious of any sin is therefore only proof that he is a great and hardened transgressor. This is also the most hopeless feature of his case, since for one who never realizes his sin there is no salvation. In the light of this truth, we see the amazing grace of God, not only in the gift of Christ to die for sinners, but in the gift of the Holy Spirit to convince men of their sins and to lead them to accept the Savior.Ps. 90:8—“Thou hast set ... Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance”= man's inner sinfulness is hidden from himself, until it is contrasted with the holiness of God. Light = a luminary or sun, which shines down into the depths of the heart and brings out its hidden evil into painful relief. See Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:248-259; Edwards, Works, 2:326; John Caird, Reasons for Men's Unconsciousness of their Sins, in Sermons, 33.
We have shown that sin is a state, a state of the will, a selfish state of the will. We now proceed to show that this selfish state of the will is universal. We divide our proof into two parts. In the first, we regard sin in its aspect as conscious violation of law; in the second, in its aspect as a bias of the nature to evil, prior to or underlying consciousness.
I. Every human being who has arrived at moral consciousness has committed acts, or cherished dispositions, contrary to the divine law.1.Proof from Scripture.The universality of transgression is:(a) Set forth in direct statements of Scripture.1 K. 8:46—“there is no man that sinneth not”;Ps. 143:2—“enter not into judgment with thy servant; For in thy sight no man living is righteous”;Prov. 20:9—“Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?”;Eccl. 7:20—“Surely there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not”;Luke 11:13—“If ye, then, being evil”;Rom. 3:10, 12—“There is none righteous, no, not one.... There is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one”;19, 20—“that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of God: because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight; for through the law cometh the knowledge of sin”;23—“for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God”;Gal. 3:22—“the scripture shut up all things under sin”;James 3:2—“For in many things we all stumble”;1 John 1:8—“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”CompareMat. 6:12—“forgive us our debts”—given as a prayer for all men;14—“if ye forgive men their trespasses”—the condition of our own forgiveness.(b) Implied in declarations of the universal need of atonement, regeneration, and repentance.Universal need of atonement:Mark 16:16—“He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved”(Mark 16:9-20, though probably not written by Mark, is nevertheless of canonical authority);John 3:16—“God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish”;6:50—“This is the bread which cometh down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die”;12:47—“I came not to judge the world, but to save the world”;Acts 4:12—“in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved.”Universal need of regeneration:John 3:3, 5—“Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.... Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”Universal need of repentance:Acts 17:30—“commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent.”Yet Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, in her“Unity of Good,”speaks of“the illusion which calls sin real and man a sinner needing a Savior.”[pg 574](c) Shown from the condemnation resting upon all who do not accept Christ.John 3:18—“he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God”;36—“he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him”; Compare1 John 5:19—“the whole world lieth in[i. e., in union with]the evil one”; see Annotated Paragraph Bible,in loco. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 318—“Law requires love to God. This implies love to our neighbor, not only abstaining from all injury to him, but righteousness in all our relations, forgiving instead of requiting, help to enemies as well as friends in all salutary ways, self-discipline, avoidance of all sensuous immoderation, subjection of all sensuous activity as means for spiritual ends in the kingdom of God, and all this, not as a matter of outward conduct merely, but from the heart and as the satisfaction of one's own will and desire. This is the will of God respecting us, which Jesus has revealed and of which he is the example in his life. Instead of this, man universally seeks to promote his own life, pleasure, and honor.”(d) Consistent with those passages which at first sight seem to ascribe to certain men a goodness which renders them acceptable to God, where a closer examination will show that in each case the goodness supposed is a merely imperfect and fancied goodness, a goodness of mere aspiration and impulse due to preliminary workings of God's Spirit, or a goodness resulting from the trust of a conscious sinner in God's method of salvation.InMat 9:12—“They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick”—Jesus means those who in their own esteem are whole;cf.13—“I came not to call the righteous, but sinners”—“if any were truly righteous, they would not need my salvation; if they think themselves so, they will not care to seek it”(An. Par. Bib.). InLuke 10:30-37—the parable of the good Samaritan—Jesus intimates, not that the good Samaritan was not a sinner, but that there were saved sinners outside of the bounds of Israel. InActs 10:35—“in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him”—Peter declares, not that Cornelius was not a sinner, but that God had accepted him through Christ; Cornelius was already justified, but he needed to know (1)thathe was saved, and (2)howhe was saved; and Peter was sent to tell him of the fact, and of the method, of his salvation in Christ. InRom. 2:14—“for when Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law unto themselves”—it is only said that in certain respects the obedience of these Gentiles shows that they have an unwritten law in their hearts; it is not said that they perfectly obey the law and therefore have no sin—for Paul says immediately after (Rom. 3:9)—“we before laid to the charge both of Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin.”So with regard to the words“perfect”and“upright,”as applied to godly men. We shall see, when we come to consider the doctrine of Sanctification, that the word“perfect,”as applied to spiritual conditions already attained, signifies only a relative perfection, equivalent to sincere piety or maturity of Christian judgment, in other words, the perfection of a sinner who has long trusted in Christ, and in whom Christ has overcome his chief defects of character. See1 Cor. 2:6—“we speak wisdom among the perfect”(Am. Rev.:“among them that are full-grown”);Phil. 3:15—“let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded”—i. e., to press toward the goal—a goal expressly said by the apostles to be not yet attained (v. 12-14).“Est deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo.”God is the“spark that fires our clay.”S. S. Times, Sept. 21, 1901:609—“Humanity is better and worse than men have painted it. There has been a kind of theological pessimism in denouncing human sinfulness, which has been blind to the abounding love and patience and courage and fidelity to duty among men.”A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 287-290—“There is a natural life of Christ, and that life pulses and throbs in all men everywhere. All men are created in Christ, before they are recreated in him. The whole race lives, moves, and has its being in him, for he is the soul of its soul and the life of its life.”To Christ then, and not to unaided human nature, we attribute the noble impulses of unregenerate men. These impulses are drawings of his Spirit, moving men to repentance. But they are influences of his grace which, if resisted, leave the soul in more than its original darkness.2.Proof from history, observation, and the common judgment of mankind.(a) History witnesses to the universality of sin, in its accounts of the universal prevalence of priesthood and sacrifice.[pg 575]See references in Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 161-172, 335-339. Baptist Review, 1882:343—“Plutarch speaks of the tear-stained eyes, the pallid and woe-begone countenances which he sees at the public altars, men rolling themselves in the mire and confessing their sins. Among the common people the dull feeling of guilt was too real to be shaken off or laughed away.”(b) Every man knows himself to have come short of moral perfection, and, in proportion to his experience of the world, recognizes the fact that every other man has come short of it also.Chinese proverb:“There are but two good men; one is dead, and the other is not yet born.”Idaho proverb:“The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”But the proverb applies to the white man also. Dr. Jacob Chamberlain, the missionary, said:“I never but once in India heard a man deny that he was a sinner. But once a Brahmin interrupted me and said:‘I deny your premisses. I am not a sinner. I do not need to do better.’For a moment I was abashed. Then I said:‘But what do your neighbors say?’Thereupon one cried out:‘He cheated me in trading horses’; another:‘He defrauded a widow of her inheritance.’The Brahmin went out of the house, and I never saw him again.”A great nephew of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, when a child, wrote in a few lines an“Essay on the Life of Man,”which ran as follows:“A man's life naturally divides itself into three distinct parts: the first when he is contriving and planning all kinds of villainy and rascality,—that is the period of youth and innocence. In the second, he is found putting in practice all the villainy and rascality he has contrived,—that is the flower of mankind and prime of life. The third and last period is that when he is making his soul and preparing for another world,—that is the period of dotage.”(c) The common judgment of mankind declares that there is an element of selfishness in every human heart, and that every man is prone to some form of sin. This common judgment is expressed in the maxims:“No man is perfect”;“Every man has his weak side”, or“his price”; and every great name in literature has attested its truth.Seneca, De Ira, 3:26—“We are all wicked. What one blames in another he will find in his own bosom. We live among the wicked, ourselves being wicked”; Ep., 22—“No one has strength of himself to emerge [from this wickedness]; some one must needs hold forth a hand; some one must draw us out.”Ovid, Met., 7:19—“I see the things that are better and I approve them, yet I follow the worse.... We strive even after that which is forbidden, and we desire the things that are denied.”Cicero:“Nature has given us faint sparks of knowledge; we extinguish them by our immoralities.”Shakespeare, Othello, 3:3—“Where's that palace whereinto foul things Sometimes Intrude not? Who has a breast so pure, But some uncleanly apprehensions keep leets [meetings in court] and law-days, and in sessions sit With meditations lawful?”Henry VI., II:3:3—“Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.”Hamlet, 2:2, compares God's influence to the sun which“breeds maggots in a dead dog, Kissing carrion,”—that is, God is no more responsible for the corruption in man's heart and the evil that comes from it, than the sun is responsible for the maggots which its heat breeds in a dead dog; 3:1—“We are arrant knaves all.”Timon of Athens, 1:2—“Who lives that's not depraved or depraves?”Goethe:“I see no fault committed which I too might not have committed.”Dr. Johnson:“Every man knows that of himself which he dare not tell to his dearest friend.”Thackeray showed himself a master in fiction by having no heroes; the paragons of virtue belonged to a cruder age of romance. So George Eliot represents life correctly by setting before us no perfect characters; all act from mixed motives. Carlyle, hero-worshiper as he was inclined to be, is said to have become disgusted with each of his heroes before he finished his biography. Emerson said that to understand any crime, he had only to look into his own heart. Robert Burns:“God knows I'm no thing I would be, Nor am I even the thing I could be.”Huxley:“The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.”And he speaks of“the infinite wickedness”which has attended the course of human history. Matthew Arnold:“What mortal, when he saw, Life's voyage done, his heavenly Friend, Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly:—I have kept uninfringed[pg 576]my nature's law: The inly written chart thou gavest me, to guide me, I have kept by to the end?”Walter Besant, Children of Gibeon:“The men of ability do not desire a system in which they shall not be able to do good to themselves first.”“Ready to offer praise and prayer on Sunday, if on Monday they may go into the market place to skin their fellows and sell their hides.”Yet Confucius declares that“man is born good.”He confounds conscience with will—thesenseof right with theloveof right. Dean Swift's worthy sought many years for a method of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Human nature of itself is as little able to bear the fruits of God.Every man will grant (1) that he is not perfect in moral character; (2) that love to God has not been the constant motive of his actions,i. e., that he has been to some degree selfish; (3) that he has committed at least one known violation of conscience. Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 86, 87—“Those theorists who reject revealed religion, and remand man to the first principles of ethics and morality as the only religion that he needs, send him to a tribunal that damns him”; for it is simple fact that“no human creature, in any country or grade of civilization, has ever glorified God to the extent of his knowledge of God.”3.Proof from Christian experience.(a) In proportion to his spiritual progress does the Christian recognize evil dispositions within him, which but for divine grace might germinate and bring forth the most various forms of outward transgression.See Goodwin's experience, in Baird, Elohim Revealed, 409; Goodwin, member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, speaking of his conversion, says:“An abundant discovery was made to me of my inward lusts and concupiscence, and I was amazed to see with what greediness I had sought the gratification of every sin.”Töllner's experience, in Martensen's Dogmatics: Töllner, though inclined to Pelagianism, says:“I look into my own heart and I see with penitent sorrow that I must in God's sight accuse myself of all the offences I have named,”—and he had named only deliberate transgressions;—“he who does not allow that he is similarly guilty, let him look deep into his own heart.”John Newton sees the murderer led to execution, and says:“There, but for the grace of God, goes John Newton.”Count de Maistre:“I do not know what the heart of a villain may be—I only know that of a virtuous man, and that is frightful.”Tholuck, on the fiftieth anniversary of his professorship at Halle, said to his students:“In review of God's manifold blessings, the thing I seem most to thank him for is the conviction of sin.”Roper Ascham:“By experience we find out a short way, by a long wandering.”Luke 15:25-32is sometimes referred to as indicating that there are some of God's children who never wander from the Father's house. But there were two prodigals in that family. The elder was a servant in spirit as well as the younger. J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 41, 42—“In the wish of the elder son that he might sometimes feast with his own friends apart from his father, was contained the germ of that desire to escape the wholesome restraints of home which, in its full development, had brought his brother first to riotous living, and afterwards to the service of the stranger and the herding of swine. This root of sin is in us all, but in him it was not so full-grown as to bring death. Yet he says:‘Lo, these many years do I serve thee’(δουλεύω—as a bondservant),‘and I never transgressed a commandment of thine.’Are the father's commandments grievous? Is service true and sincere, without love from the heart? The elder brother was calculating toward his father and unsympathetic toward his brother.”Sir J. R. Seelye, Ecce Homo:“No virtue can be safe, unless it is enthusiastic.”Wordsworth:“Heaven rejects the love Of nicely calculated less or more.”(b) Since those most enlightened by the Holy Spirit recognize themselves as guilty of unnumbered violations of the divine law, the absence of any consciousness of sin on the part of unregenerate men must be regarded as proof that they are blinded by persistent transgression.It is a remarkable fact that, while those who are enlightened by the Holy Spirit and who are actually overcoming their sins see more and more of the evil of their hearts and lives, those who are the slaves of sin see less and less of that evil, and often deny that they are sinners at all. Rousseau, in his Confessions, confesses sin in a spirit which itself needs to be confessed. He glosses over his vices, and magnifies his virtues.“No[pg 577]man,”he says,“can come to the throne of God and say:‘I am a better man than Rousseau.’... Let the trumpet of the last judgment sound when it will: I will present myself before the Sovereign Judge with this book in my hand, and I will say aloud:‘Here is what I did, what I thought, and what I was.’”“Ah,”said he, just before he expired,“how happy a thing it is to die, when one has no reason for remorse or self-reproach!”And then, addressing himself to the Almighty, he said:“Eternal Being, the soul that I am going to give thee back is as pure at this moment as it was when it proceeded from thee; render it a partaker of thy felicity!”Yet, in his boyhood, Rousseau was a petty thief. In his writings, he advocated adultery and suicide. He lived for more than twenty years in practical licentiousness. His children, most of whom, if not all, were illegitimate, he sent off to the foundling hospital as soon as they were born, thus casting them upon the charity of strangers, yet he inflamed the mothers of France with his eloquent appeals to them to nurse their own babies. He was mean, vacillating, treacherous, hypocritical, and blasphemous. And in his Confessions, he rehearses the exciting scenes of his life in the spirit of the bold adventurer. See N. M. Williams, in Bap. Review, art.: Rousseau, from which the substance of the above is taken.Edwin Forrest, when accused of being converted in a religious revival, wrote an indignant denial to the public press, saying that he had nothing to regret; his sins were those of omission rather than commission; he had always acted upon the principle of loving his friends and hating his enemies; and trusting in the justice as well as the mercy of God, he hoped, when he left this earthly sphere, to“wrap the drapery of his couch about him, and lie down to pleasant dreams.”And yet no man of his time was more arrogant, self-sufficient, licentious, revengeful. John Y. McCane, when sentenced to Sing Sing prison for six years for violating the election laws by the most highhanded bribery and ballot-stuffing, declared that he had never done anything wrong in his life. He was a Sunday School Superintendent, moreover. A lady who lived to the age of 92, protested that, if she had her whole life to live over again, she would not alter a single thing. Lord Nelson, after he had received his death wound at Trafalgar, said:“I have never been a great sinner.”Yet at that very time he was living in open adultery. Tennyson, Sea Dreams:“With all his conscience and one eye askew, So false, he partly took himself for true.”Contrast the utterance of the apostle Paul:1 Tim. 1:15—“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”It has been well said that“the greatest of sins is to be conscious of none.”Rowland Hill:“The devil makes little of sin, that he may retain the sinner.”The following reasons may be suggested for men's unconsciousness of their sins: 1. We never know the force of any evil passion or principle within us, until we begin to resist it. 2. God's providential restraints upon sin have hitherto prevented its full development. 3. God's judgments against sin have not yet been made manifest. 4. Sin itself has a blinding influence upon the mind. 5. Only he who has been saved from the penalty of sin is willing to look into the abyss from which he has been rescued.—That a man is unconscious of any sin is therefore only proof that he is a great and hardened transgressor. This is also the most hopeless feature of his case, since for one who never realizes his sin there is no salvation. In the light of this truth, we see the amazing grace of God, not only in the gift of Christ to die for sinners, but in the gift of the Holy Spirit to convince men of their sins and to lead them to accept the Savior.Ps. 90:8—“Thou hast set ... Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance”= man's inner sinfulness is hidden from himself, until it is contrasted with the holiness of God. Light = a luminary or sun, which shines down into the depths of the heart and brings out its hidden evil into painful relief. See Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:248-259; Edwards, Works, 2:326; John Caird, Reasons for Men's Unconsciousness of their Sins, in Sermons, 33.
1.Proof from Scripture.
The universality of transgression is:
(a) Set forth in direct statements of Scripture.
1 K. 8:46—“there is no man that sinneth not”;Ps. 143:2—“enter not into judgment with thy servant; For in thy sight no man living is righteous”;Prov. 20:9—“Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?”;Eccl. 7:20—“Surely there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not”;Luke 11:13—“If ye, then, being evil”;Rom. 3:10, 12—“There is none righteous, no, not one.... There is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one”;19, 20—“that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of God: because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight; for through the law cometh the knowledge of sin”;23—“for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God”;Gal. 3:22—“the scripture shut up all things under sin”;James 3:2—“For in many things we all stumble”;1 John 1:8—“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”CompareMat. 6:12—“forgive us our debts”—given as a prayer for all men;14—“if ye forgive men their trespasses”—the condition of our own forgiveness.
1 K. 8:46—“there is no man that sinneth not”;Ps. 143:2—“enter not into judgment with thy servant; For in thy sight no man living is righteous”;Prov. 20:9—“Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?”;Eccl. 7:20—“Surely there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not”;Luke 11:13—“If ye, then, being evil”;Rom. 3:10, 12—“There is none righteous, no, not one.... There is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one”;19, 20—“that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of God: because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight; for through the law cometh the knowledge of sin”;23—“for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God”;Gal. 3:22—“the scripture shut up all things under sin”;James 3:2—“For in many things we all stumble”;1 John 1:8—“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”CompareMat. 6:12—“forgive us our debts”—given as a prayer for all men;14—“if ye forgive men their trespasses”—the condition of our own forgiveness.
(b) Implied in declarations of the universal need of atonement, regeneration, and repentance.
Universal need of atonement:Mark 16:16—“He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved”(Mark 16:9-20, though probably not written by Mark, is nevertheless of canonical authority);John 3:16—“God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish”;6:50—“This is the bread which cometh down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die”;12:47—“I came not to judge the world, but to save the world”;Acts 4:12—“in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved.”Universal need of regeneration:John 3:3, 5—“Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.... Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”Universal need of repentance:Acts 17:30—“commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent.”Yet Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, in her“Unity of Good,”speaks of“the illusion which calls sin real and man a sinner needing a Savior.”
Universal need of atonement:Mark 16:16—“He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved”(Mark 16:9-20, though probably not written by Mark, is nevertheless of canonical authority);John 3:16—“God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish”;6:50—“This is the bread which cometh down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die”;12:47—“I came not to judge the world, but to save the world”;Acts 4:12—“in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved.”Universal need of regeneration:John 3:3, 5—“Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.... Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”Universal need of repentance:Acts 17:30—“commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent.”Yet Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, in her“Unity of Good,”speaks of“the illusion which calls sin real and man a sinner needing a Savior.”
(c) Shown from the condemnation resting upon all who do not accept Christ.
John 3:18—“he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God”;36—“he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him”; Compare1 John 5:19—“the whole world lieth in[i. e., in union with]the evil one”; see Annotated Paragraph Bible,in loco. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 318—“Law requires love to God. This implies love to our neighbor, not only abstaining from all injury to him, but righteousness in all our relations, forgiving instead of requiting, help to enemies as well as friends in all salutary ways, self-discipline, avoidance of all sensuous immoderation, subjection of all sensuous activity as means for spiritual ends in the kingdom of God, and all this, not as a matter of outward conduct merely, but from the heart and as the satisfaction of one's own will and desire. This is the will of God respecting us, which Jesus has revealed and of which he is the example in his life. Instead of this, man universally seeks to promote his own life, pleasure, and honor.”
John 3:18—“he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God”;36—“he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him”; Compare1 John 5:19—“the whole world lieth in[i. e., in union with]the evil one”; see Annotated Paragraph Bible,in loco. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 318—“Law requires love to God. This implies love to our neighbor, not only abstaining from all injury to him, but righteousness in all our relations, forgiving instead of requiting, help to enemies as well as friends in all salutary ways, self-discipline, avoidance of all sensuous immoderation, subjection of all sensuous activity as means for spiritual ends in the kingdom of God, and all this, not as a matter of outward conduct merely, but from the heart and as the satisfaction of one's own will and desire. This is the will of God respecting us, which Jesus has revealed and of which he is the example in his life. Instead of this, man universally seeks to promote his own life, pleasure, and honor.”
(d) Consistent with those passages which at first sight seem to ascribe to certain men a goodness which renders them acceptable to God, where a closer examination will show that in each case the goodness supposed is a merely imperfect and fancied goodness, a goodness of mere aspiration and impulse due to preliminary workings of God's Spirit, or a goodness resulting from the trust of a conscious sinner in God's method of salvation.
InMat 9:12—“They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick”—Jesus means those who in their own esteem are whole;cf.13—“I came not to call the righteous, but sinners”—“if any were truly righteous, they would not need my salvation; if they think themselves so, they will not care to seek it”(An. Par. Bib.). InLuke 10:30-37—the parable of the good Samaritan—Jesus intimates, not that the good Samaritan was not a sinner, but that there were saved sinners outside of the bounds of Israel. InActs 10:35—“in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him”—Peter declares, not that Cornelius was not a sinner, but that God had accepted him through Christ; Cornelius was already justified, but he needed to know (1)thathe was saved, and (2)howhe was saved; and Peter was sent to tell him of the fact, and of the method, of his salvation in Christ. InRom. 2:14—“for when Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law unto themselves”—it is only said that in certain respects the obedience of these Gentiles shows that they have an unwritten law in their hearts; it is not said that they perfectly obey the law and therefore have no sin—for Paul says immediately after (Rom. 3:9)—“we before laid to the charge both of Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin.”So with regard to the words“perfect”and“upright,”as applied to godly men. We shall see, when we come to consider the doctrine of Sanctification, that the word“perfect,”as applied to spiritual conditions already attained, signifies only a relative perfection, equivalent to sincere piety or maturity of Christian judgment, in other words, the perfection of a sinner who has long trusted in Christ, and in whom Christ has overcome his chief defects of character. See1 Cor. 2:6—“we speak wisdom among the perfect”(Am. Rev.:“among them that are full-grown”);Phil. 3:15—“let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded”—i. e., to press toward the goal—a goal expressly said by the apostles to be not yet attained (v. 12-14).“Est deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo.”God is the“spark that fires our clay.”S. S. Times, Sept. 21, 1901:609—“Humanity is better and worse than men have painted it. There has been a kind of theological pessimism in denouncing human sinfulness, which has been blind to the abounding love and patience and courage and fidelity to duty among men.”A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 287-290—“There is a natural life of Christ, and that life pulses and throbs in all men everywhere. All men are created in Christ, before they are recreated in him. The whole race lives, moves, and has its being in him, for he is the soul of its soul and the life of its life.”To Christ then, and not to unaided human nature, we attribute the noble impulses of unregenerate men. These impulses are drawings of his Spirit, moving men to repentance. But they are influences of his grace which, if resisted, leave the soul in more than its original darkness.
InMat 9:12—“They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick”—Jesus means those who in their own esteem are whole;cf.13—“I came not to call the righteous, but sinners”—“if any were truly righteous, they would not need my salvation; if they think themselves so, they will not care to seek it”(An. Par. Bib.). InLuke 10:30-37—the parable of the good Samaritan—Jesus intimates, not that the good Samaritan was not a sinner, but that there were saved sinners outside of the bounds of Israel. InActs 10:35—“in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him”—Peter declares, not that Cornelius was not a sinner, but that God had accepted him through Christ; Cornelius was already justified, but he needed to know (1)thathe was saved, and (2)howhe was saved; and Peter was sent to tell him of the fact, and of the method, of his salvation in Christ. InRom. 2:14—“for when Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law unto themselves”—it is only said that in certain respects the obedience of these Gentiles shows that they have an unwritten law in their hearts; it is not said that they perfectly obey the law and therefore have no sin—for Paul says immediately after (Rom. 3:9)—“we before laid to the charge both of Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin.”
So with regard to the words“perfect”and“upright,”as applied to godly men. We shall see, when we come to consider the doctrine of Sanctification, that the word“perfect,”as applied to spiritual conditions already attained, signifies only a relative perfection, equivalent to sincere piety or maturity of Christian judgment, in other words, the perfection of a sinner who has long trusted in Christ, and in whom Christ has overcome his chief defects of character. See1 Cor. 2:6—“we speak wisdom among the perfect”(Am. Rev.:“among them that are full-grown”);Phil. 3:15—“let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded”—i. e., to press toward the goal—a goal expressly said by the apostles to be not yet attained (v. 12-14).
“Est deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo.”God is the“spark that fires our clay.”S. S. Times, Sept. 21, 1901:609—“Humanity is better and worse than men have painted it. There has been a kind of theological pessimism in denouncing human sinfulness, which has been blind to the abounding love and patience and courage and fidelity to duty among men.”A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 287-290—“There is a natural life of Christ, and that life pulses and throbs in all men everywhere. All men are created in Christ, before they are recreated in him. The whole race lives, moves, and has its being in him, for he is the soul of its soul and the life of its life.”To Christ then, and not to unaided human nature, we attribute the noble impulses of unregenerate men. These impulses are drawings of his Spirit, moving men to repentance. But they are influences of his grace which, if resisted, leave the soul in more than its original darkness.
2.Proof from history, observation, and the common judgment of mankind.
(a) History witnesses to the universality of sin, in its accounts of the universal prevalence of priesthood and sacrifice.
See references in Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 161-172, 335-339. Baptist Review, 1882:343—“Plutarch speaks of the tear-stained eyes, the pallid and woe-begone countenances which he sees at the public altars, men rolling themselves in the mire and confessing their sins. Among the common people the dull feeling of guilt was too real to be shaken off or laughed away.”
See references in Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 161-172, 335-339. Baptist Review, 1882:343—“Plutarch speaks of the tear-stained eyes, the pallid and woe-begone countenances which he sees at the public altars, men rolling themselves in the mire and confessing their sins. Among the common people the dull feeling of guilt was too real to be shaken off or laughed away.”
(b) Every man knows himself to have come short of moral perfection, and, in proportion to his experience of the world, recognizes the fact that every other man has come short of it also.
Chinese proverb:“There are but two good men; one is dead, and the other is not yet born.”Idaho proverb:“The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”But the proverb applies to the white man also. Dr. Jacob Chamberlain, the missionary, said:“I never but once in India heard a man deny that he was a sinner. But once a Brahmin interrupted me and said:‘I deny your premisses. I am not a sinner. I do not need to do better.’For a moment I was abashed. Then I said:‘But what do your neighbors say?’Thereupon one cried out:‘He cheated me in trading horses’; another:‘He defrauded a widow of her inheritance.’The Brahmin went out of the house, and I never saw him again.”A great nephew of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, when a child, wrote in a few lines an“Essay on the Life of Man,”which ran as follows:“A man's life naturally divides itself into three distinct parts: the first when he is contriving and planning all kinds of villainy and rascality,—that is the period of youth and innocence. In the second, he is found putting in practice all the villainy and rascality he has contrived,—that is the flower of mankind and prime of life. The third and last period is that when he is making his soul and preparing for another world,—that is the period of dotage.”
Chinese proverb:“There are but two good men; one is dead, and the other is not yet born.”Idaho proverb:“The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”But the proverb applies to the white man also. Dr. Jacob Chamberlain, the missionary, said:“I never but once in India heard a man deny that he was a sinner. But once a Brahmin interrupted me and said:‘I deny your premisses. I am not a sinner. I do not need to do better.’For a moment I was abashed. Then I said:‘But what do your neighbors say?’Thereupon one cried out:‘He cheated me in trading horses’; another:‘He defrauded a widow of her inheritance.’The Brahmin went out of the house, and I never saw him again.”A great nephew of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, when a child, wrote in a few lines an“Essay on the Life of Man,”which ran as follows:“A man's life naturally divides itself into three distinct parts: the first when he is contriving and planning all kinds of villainy and rascality,—that is the period of youth and innocence. In the second, he is found putting in practice all the villainy and rascality he has contrived,—that is the flower of mankind and prime of life. The third and last period is that when he is making his soul and preparing for another world,—that is the period of dotage.”
(c) The common judgment of mankind declares that there is an element of selfishness in every human heart, and that every man is prone to some form of sin. This common judgment is expressed in the maxims:“No man is perfect”;“Every man has his weak side”, or“his price”; and every great name in literature has attested its truth.
Seneca, De Ira, 3:26—“We are all wicked. What one blames in another he will find in his own bosom. We live among the wicked, ourselves being wicked”; Ep., 22—“No one has strength of himself to emerge [from this wickedness]; some one must needs hold forth a hand; some one must draw us out.”Ovid, Met., 7:19—“I see the things that are better and I approve them, yet I follow the worse.... We strive even after that which is forbidden, and we desire the things that are denied.”Cicero:“Nature has given us faint sparks of knowledge; we extinguish them by our immoralities.”Shakespeare, Othello, 3:3—“Where's that palace whereinto foul things Sometimes Intrude not? Who has a breast so pure, But some uncleanly apprehensions keep leets [meetings in court] and law-days, and in sessions sit With meditations lawful?”Henry VI., II:3:3—“Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.”Hamlet, 2:2, compares God's influence to the sun which“breeds maggots in a dead dog, Kissing carrion,”—that is, God is no more responsible for the corruption in man's heart and the evil that comes from it, than the sun is responsible for the maggots which its heat breeds in a dead dog; 3:1—“We are arrant knaves all.”Timon of Athens, 1:2—“Who lives that's not depraved or depraves?”Goethe:“I see no fault committed which I too might not have committed.”Dr. Johnson:“Every man knows that of himself which he dare not tell to his dearest friend.”Thackeray showed himself a master in fiction by having no heroes; the paragons of virtue belonged to a cruder age of romance. So George Eliot represents life correctly by setting before us no perfect characters; all act from mixed motives. Carlyle, hero-worshiper as he was inclined to be, is said to have become disgusted with each of his heroes before he finished his biography. Emerson said that to understand any crime, he had only to look into his own heart. Robert Burns:“God knows I'm no thing I would be, Nor am I even the thing I could be.”Huxley:“The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.”And he speaks of“the infinite wickedness”which has attended the course of human history. Matthew Arnold:“What mortal, when he saw, Life's voyage done, his heavenly Friend, Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly:—I have kept uninfringed[pg 576]my nature's law: The inly written chart thou gavest me, to guide me, I have kept by to the end?”Walter Besant, Children of Gibeon:“The men of ability do not desire a system in which they shall not be able to do good to themselves first.”“Ready to offer praise and prayer on Sunday, if on Monday they may go into the market place to skin their fellows and sell their hides.”Yet Confucius declares that“man is born good.”He confounds conscience with will—thesenseof right with theloveof right. Dean Swift's worthy sought many years for a method of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Human nature of itself is as little able to bear the fruits of God.Every man will grant (1) that he is not perfect in moral character; (2) that love to God has not been the constant motive of his actions,i. e., that he has been to some degree selfish; (3) that he has committed at least one known violation of conscience. Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 86, 87—“Those theorists who reject revealed religion, and remand man to the first principles of ethics and morality as the only religion that he needs, send him to a tribunal that damns him”; for it is simple fact that“no human creature, in any country or grade of civilization, has ever glorified God to the extent of his knowledge of God.”
Seneca, De Ira, 3:26—“We are all wicked. What one blames in another he will find in his own bosom. We live among the wicked, ourselves being wicked”; Ep., 22—“No one has strength of himself to emerge [from this wickedness]; some one must needs hold forth a hand; some one must draw us out.”Ovid, Met., 7:19—“I see the things that are better and I approve them, yet I follow the worse.... We strive even after that which is forbidden, and we desire the things that are denied.”Cicero:“Nature has given us faint sparks of knowledge; we extinguish them by our immoralities.”
Shakespeare, Othello, 3:3—“Where's that palace whereinto foul things Sometimes Intrude not? Who has a breast so pure, But some uncleanly apprehensions keep leets [meetings in court] and law-days, and in sessions sit With meditations lawful?”Henry VI., II:3:3—“Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.”Hamlet, 2:2, compares God's influence to the sun which“breeds maggots in a dead dog, Kissing carrion,”—that is, God is no more responsible for the corruption in man's heart and the evil that comes from it, than the sun is responsible for the maggots which its heat breeds in a dead dog; 3:1—“We are arrant knaves all.”Timon of Athens, 1:2—“Who lives that's not depraved or depraves?”
Goethe:“I see no fault committed which I too might not have committed.”Dr. Johnson:“Every man knows that of himself which he dare not tell to his dearest friend.”Thackeray showed himself a master in fiction by having no heroes; the paragons of virtue belonged to a cruder age of romance. So George Eliot represents life correctly by setting before us no perfect characters; all act from mixed motives. Carlyle, hero-worshiper as he was inclined to be, is said to have become disgusted with each of his heroes before he finished his biography. Emerson said that to understand any crime, he had only to look into his own heart. Robert Burns:“God knows I'm no thing I would be, Nor am I even the thing I could be.”Huxley:“The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.”And he speaks of“the infinite wickedness”which has attended the course of human history. Matthew Arnold:“What mortal, when he saw, Life's voyage done, his heavenly Friend, Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly:—I have kept uninfringed[pg 576]my nature's law: The inly written chart thou gavest me, to guide me, I have kept by to the end?”Walter Besant, Children of Gibeon:“The men of ability do not desire a system in which they shall not be able to do good to themselves first.”“Ready to offer praise and prayer on Sunday, if on Monday they may go into the market place to skin their fellows and sell their hides.”Yet Confucius declares that“man is born good.”He confounds conscience with will—thesenseof right with theloveof right. Dean Swift's worthy sought many years for a method of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Human nature of itself is as little able to bear the fruits of God.
Every man will grant (1) that he is not perfect in moral character; (2) that love to God has not been the constant motive of his actions,i. e., that he has been to some degree selfish; (3) that he has committed at least one known violation of conscience. Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 86, 87—“Those theorists who reject revealed religion, and remand man to the first principles of ethics and morality as the only religion that he needs, send him to a tribunal that damns him”; for it is simple fact that“no human creature, in any country or grade of civilization, has ever glorified God to the extent of his knowledge of God.”
3.Proof from Christian experience.
(a) In proportion to his spiritual progress does the Christian recognize evil dispositions within him, which but for divine grace might germinate and bring forth the most various forms of outward transgression.
See Goodwin's experience, in Baird, Elohim Revealed, 409; Goodwin, member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, speaking of his conversion, says:“An abundant discovery was made to me of my inward lusts and concupiscence, and I was amazed to see with what greediness I had sought the gratification of every sin.”Töllner's experience, in Martensen's Dogmatics: Töllner, though inclined to Pelagianism, says:“I look into my own heart and I see with penitent sorrow that I must in God's sight accuse myself of all the offences I have named,”—and he had named only deliberate transgressions;—“he who does not allow that he is similarly guilty, let him look deep into his own heart.”John Newton sees the murderer led to execution, and says:“There, but for the grace of God, goes John Newton.”Count de Maistre:“I do not know what the heart of a villain may be—I only know that of a virtuous man, and that is frightful.”Tholuck, on the fiftieth anniversary of his professorship at Halle, said to his students:“In review of God's manifold blessings, the thing I seem most to thank him for is the conviction of sin.”Roper Ascham:“By experience we find out a short way, by a long wandering.”Luke 15:25-32is sometimes referred to as indicating that there are some of God's children who never wander from the Father's house. But there were two prodigals in that family. The elder was a servant in spirit as well as the younger. J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 41, 42—“In the wish of the elder son that he might sometimes feast with his own friends apart from his father, was contained the germ of that desire to escape the wholesome restraints of home which, in its full development, had brought his brother first to riotous living, and afterwards to the service of the stranger and the herding of swine. This root of sin is in us all, but in him it was not so full-grown as to bring death. Yet he says:‘Lo, these many years do I serve thee’(δουλεύω—as a bondservant),‘and I never transgressed a commandment of thine.’Are the father's commandments grievous? Is service true and sincere, without love from the heart? The elder brother was calculating toward his father and unsympathetic toward his brother.”Sir J. R. Seelye, Ecce Homo:“No virtue can be safe, unless it is enthusiastic.”Wordsworth:“Heaven rejects the love Of nicely calculated less or more.”
See Goodwin's experience, in Baird, Elohim Revealed, 409; Goodwin, member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, speaking of his conversion, says:“An abundant discovery was made to me of my inward lusts and concupiscence, and I was amazed to see with what greediness I had sought the gratification of every sin.”Töllner's experience, in Martensen's Dogmatics: Töllner, though inclined to Pelagianism, says:“I look into my own heart and I see with penitent sorrow that I must in God's sight accuse myself of all the offences I have named,”—and he had named only deliberate transgressions;—“he who does not allow that he is similarly guilty, let him look deep into his own heart.”John Newton sees the murderer led to execution, and says:“There, but for the grace of God, goes John Newton.”Count de Maistre:“I do not know what the heart of a villain may be—I only know that of a virtuous man, and that is frightful.”Tholuck, on the fiftieth anniversary of his professorship at Halle, said to his students:“In review of God's manifold blessings, the thing I seem most to thank him for is the conviction of sin.”
Roper Ascham:“By experience we find out a short way, by a long wandering.”Luke 15:25-32is sometimes referred to as indicating that there are some of God's children who never wander from the Father's house. But there were two prodigals in that family. The elder was a servant in spirit as well as the younger. J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 41, 42—“In the wish of the elder son that he might sometimes feast with his own friends apart from his father, was contained the germ of that desire to escape the wholesome restraints of home which, in its full development, had brought his brother first to riotous living, and afterwards to the service of the stranger and the herding of swine. This root of sin is in us all, but in him it was not so full-grown as to bring death. Yet he says:‘Lo, these many years do I serve thee’(δουλεύω—as a bondservant),‘and I never transgressed a commandment of thine.’Are the father's commandments grievous? Is service true and sincere, without love from the heart? The elder brother was calculating toward his father and unsympathetic toward his brother.”Sir J. R. Seelye, Ecce Homo:“No virtue can be safe, unless it is enthusiastic.”Wordsworth:“Heaven rejects the love Of nicely calculated less or more.”
(b) Since those most enlightened by the Holy Spirit recognize themselves as guilty of unnumbered violations of the divine law, the absence of any consciousness of sin on the part of unregenerate men must be regarded as proof that they are blinded by persistent transgression.
It is a remarkable fact that, while those who are enlightened by the Holy Spirit and who are actually overcoming their sins see more and more of the evil of their hearts and lives, those who are the slaves of sin see less and less of that evil, and often deny that they are sinners at all. Rousseau, in his Confessions, confesses sin in a spirit which itself needs to be confessed. He glosses over his vices, and magnifies his virtues.“No[pg 577]man,”he says,“can come to the throne of God and say:‘I am a better man than Rousseau.’... Let the trumpet of the last judgment sound when it will: I will present myself before the Sovereign Judge with this book in my hand, and I will say aloud:‘Here is what I did, what I thought, and what I was.’”“Ah,”said he, just before he expired,“how happy a thing it is to die, when one has no reason for remorse or self-reproach!”And then, addressing himself to the Almighty, he said:“Eternal Being, the soul that I am going to give thee back is as pure at this moment as it was when it proceeded from thee; render it a partaker of thy felicity!”Yet, in his boyhood, Rousseau was a petty thief. In his writings, he advocated adultery and suicide. He lived for more than twenty years in practical licentiousness. His children, most of whom, if not all, were illegitimate, he sent off to the foundling hospital as soon as they were born, thus casting them upon the charity of strangers, yet he inflamed the mothers of France with his eloquent appeals to them to nurse their own babies. He was mean, vacillating, treacherous, hypocritical, and blasphemous. And in his Confessions, he rehearses the exciting scenes of his life in the spirit of the bold adventurer. See N. M. Williams, in Bap. Review, art.: Rousseau, from which the substance of the above is taken.Edwin Forrest, when accused of being converted in a religious revival, wrote an indignant denial to the public press, saying that he had nothing to regret; his sins were those of omission rather than commission; he had always acted upon the principle of loving his friends and hating his enemies; and trusting in the justice as well as the mercy of God, he hoped, when he left this earthly sphere, to“wrap the drapery of his couch about him, and lie down to pleasant dreams.”And yet no man of his time was more arrogant, self-sufficient, licentious, revengeful. John Y. McCane, when sentenced to Sing Sing prison for six years for violating the election laws by the most highhanded bribery and ballot-stuffing, declared that he had never done anything wrong in his life. He was a Sunday School Superintendent, moreover. A lady who lived to the age of 92, protested that, if she had her whole life to live over again, she would not alter a single thing. Lord Nelson, after he had received his death wound at Trafalgar, said:“I have never been a great sinner.”Yet at that very time he was living in open adultery. Tennyson, Sea Dreams:“With all his conscience and one eye askew, So false, he partly took himself for true.”Contrast the utterance of the apostle Paul:1 Tim. 1:15—“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”It has been well said that“the greatest of sins is to be conscious of none.”Rowland Hill:“The devil makes little of sin, that he may retain the sinner.”The following reasons may be suggested for men's unconsciousness of their sins: 1. We never know the force of any evil passion or principle within us, until we begin to resist it. 2. God's providential restraints upon sin have hitherto prevented its full development. 3. God's judgments against sin have not yet been made manifest. 4. Sin itself has a blinding influence upon the mind. 5. Only he who has been saved from the penalty of sin is willing to look into the abyss from which he has been rescued.—That a man is unconscious of any sin is therefore only proof that he is a great and hardened transgressor. This is also the most hopeless feature of his case, since for one who never realizes his sin there is no salvation. In the light of this truth, we see the amazing grace of God, not only in the gift of Christ to die for sinners, but in the gift of the Holy Spirit to convince men of their sins and to lead them to accept the Savior.Ps. 90:8—“Thou hast set ... Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance”= man's inner sinfulness is hidden from himself, until it is contrasted with the holiness of God. Light = a luminary or sun, which shines down into the depths of the heart and brings out its hidden evil into painful relief. See Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:248-259; Edwards, Works, 2:326; John Caird, Reasons for Men's Unconsciousness of their Sins, in Sermons, 33.
It is a remarkable fact that, while those who are enlightened by the Holy Spirit and who are actually overcoming their sins see more and more of the evil of their hearts and lives, those who are the slaves of sin see less and less of that evil, and often deny that they are sinners at all. Rousseau, in his Confessions, confesses sin in a spirit which itself needs to be confessed. He glosses over his vices, and magnifies his virtues.“No[pg 577]man,”he says,“can come to the throne of God and say:‘I am a better man than Rousseau.’... Let the trumpet of the last judgment sound when it will: I will present myself before the Sovereign Judge with this book in my hand, and I will say aloud:‘Here is what I did, what I thought, and what I was.’”“Ah,”said he, just before he expired,“how happy a thing it is to die, when one has no reason for remorse or self-reproach!”And then, addressing himself to the Almighty, he said:“Eternal Being, the soul that I am going to give thee back is as pure at this moment as it was when it proceeded from thee; render it a partaker of thy felicity!”Yet, in his boyhood, Rousseau was a petty thief. In his writings, he advocated adultery and suicide. He lived for more than twenty years in practical licentiousness. His children, most of whom, if not all, were illegitimate, he sent off to the foundling hospital as soon as they were born, thus casting them upon the charity of strangers, yet he inflamed the mothers of France with his eloquent appeals to them to nurse their own babies. He was mean, vacillating, treacherous, hypocritical, and blasphemous. And in his Confessions, he rehearses the exciting scenes of his life in the spirit of the bold adventurer. See N. M. Williams, in Bap. Review, art.: Rousseau, from which the substance of the above is taken.
Edwin Forrest, when accused of being converted in a religious revival, wrote an indignant denial to the public press, saying that he had nothing to regret; his sins were those of omission rather than commission; he had always acted upon the principle of loving his friends and hating his enemies; and trusting in the justice as well as the mercy of God, he hoped, when he left this earthly sphere, to“wrap the drapery of his couch about him, and lie down to pleasant dreams.”And yet no man of his time was more arrogant, self-sufficient, licentious, revengeful. John Y. McCane, when sentenced to Sing Sing prison for six years for violating the election laws by the most highhanded bribery and ballot-stuffing, declared that he had never done anything wrong in his life. He was a Sunday School Superintendent, moreover. A lady who lived to the age of 92, protested that, if she had her whole life to live over again, she would not alter a single thing. Lord Nelson, after he had received his death wound at Trafalgar, said:“I have never been a great sinner.”Yet at that very time he was living in open adultery. Tennyson, Sea Dreams:“With all his conscience and one eye askew, So false, he partly took himself for true.”Contrast the utterance of the apostle Paul:1 Tim. 1:15—“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”It has been well said that“the greatest of sins is to be conscious of none.”Rowland Hill:“The devil makes little of sin, that he may retain the sinner.”
The following reasons may be suggested for men's unconsciousness of their sins: 1. We never know the force of any evil passion or principle within us, until we begin to resist it. 2. God's providential restraints upon sin have hitherto prevented its full development. 3. God's judgments against sin have not yet been made manifest. 4. Sin itself has a blinding influence upon the mind. 5. Only he who has been saved from the penalty of sin is willing to look into the abyss from which he has been rescued.—That a man is unconscious of any sin is therefore only proof that he is a great and hardened transgressor. This is also the most hopeless feature of his case, since for one who never realizes his sin there is no salvation. In the light of this truth, we see the amazing grace of God, not only in the gift of Christ to die for sinners, but in the gift of the Holy Spirit to convince men of their sins and to lead them to accept the Savior.Ps. 90:8—“Thou hast set ... Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance”= man's inner sinfulness is hidden from himself, until it is contrasted with the holiness of God. Light = a luminary or sun, which shines down into the depths of the heart and brings out its hidden evil into painful relief. See Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:248-259; Edwards, Works, 2:326; John Caird, Reasons for Men's Unconsciousness of their Sins, in Sermons, 33.