STRENGTH AGAINST
Can man be trusted with divine free-love for
M en live in sin and yet they have the secret thought that they ought not so to live, that they ought to get rid of it. Even those that have not the law in this respect “ are a law unto themselves,” for . . the work of the law [that is, each thing the law enjoins us to do] is written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts” struggling with each other, either “ accusing or else ex cusing . . (Rom. 2:15). The groan of humanity as well as the groan of creation by reason of sin has been deep and long. Not loud always; often an undertone; oftener drowned in laughter; but still terribly real. Sin as disease, infectious and hereditary; sin as guilt, inferring divine condemnation and doom, has been acknowledged; and along with the acknowledgment, the sad con sciousness has existed that the race was not made for sin and that man himself, not God, had wrought the wrong. Men in all ages and of all religions have in some poor way put in their protest against sin, “ .. . knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death . . .” (Rom. 1: 32). The fallen sons of Adam, though haters of God and of His law (Rom. 1:30), have thus unconsciously be come witnesses against themselves and unwittingly taken the side of God and of His law. All through the ages has this struggle gone on between the love and the dread of sin, the delight in lust and the sense of degradation because of it; men clasping the poi soned robe, yet wishing to tear it off; their life steeped in the evil, yet their words often lavished upon
the good inherent in man. With much warmth did the an cient pagan wisdom of Greece and Rome utter itself against vice, with deep pathos at times describing the conflict with self and the victory over the unruly will and the irregu lar appetite. But it suggested no remedy and promised no power in aid. It could only say, “ Fight on.” Philosophy was helpless in its en counters with human evil and its sympathies with earthly sorrow. It looked on and spoke many a true word but it wrought no cure, it healed no wounds, it rooted out no sin. It was the exhibition of weak ness, not of power; the mere cry of human helplessness. Romish devotees with fastings and flagellations in addition to ear nest words have tried to extirpate the wrong and nourish the right. Groping after righteousness, yet not knowing what righteousness is nor how it comes to us, they have built themselves up in self-righteousness. Professing to seek holiness, without understanding its nature, they have snared t hems e l v e s in delusions which bring no purity. Bent, as they say, upon “mortifying the flesh” ; falsely i d e n t i f y i n g “ the flesh” with the mere body and working upon the theology which teaches that it is the body which ruins the soul, they lay great stress on weakefting and macerating the corporeal frame, not knowing that they are thus feeding sin, fostering pride, making the body less fit to be the helpmeet of the soul and there by p r o d u c i n g unholiness of the darkest type in the eye of God. By rules of no gentle kind, by terror, by pain, by visions of death and the grave, by pictures of a fiercely
flaming hell, by the denial of all certainty in pardon, they have sought to terrify or force themselves into goodness. By long prayers, by bitter practices of self-denial, by slow chants at midnight or early morn in dim cathedrals, by fre quent sacraments, by deep study of old fathers, by the cold of wintry solitudes, by multiplied deeds of merit and will-worship, they have thought to expel the demon and to eradicate “ the ineradicable taint of sin.” But success has not come in this way. The enterprise was a high but a fearful one and the men knew not how terrible it was. They had quite underrated the might of the enemy while overestimating their own. The resources of the two sides were indeed unequal. Not Le on i da s against the myriads of Persia nor the old Roman Three who held the bridge against the Etruscan host could be compared to this. It might seem but the feeble aberrations of one poor human heart that they were dealing with but they knew not what these indicated, what the power of a human will is for evil, what is man’s hostility to God, what is the vitality of sin, what is the exasperating tendency of naked law, and the elasticity of evil under legal compression, what is the te nacity of man’s resistance to good ness and to the law of goodness, what all these together must be when fostered from beneath and backed by the resources of hell. In a ll thi s t he r e is not one thought of grace or divine free-love, no recognition of forgiveness as the root of holiness. Man’s philosophy and man’s religion have never sug gested this. It would seem as if man
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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