God does reign, and God will make the wrath of men to praise Him. But this old world, in the meaning of its present ar- rangement, will not, nor can it, survive under present conditions. It will survive only when created anew by the power of God. Those who see the portent of our times may well appreciate the. feelings of the prophet of old. As he felt, so may we: " I heard and my body trembled^ my lips quivered at the voice; rottenness entereth into my bones, and I tremble in my place; because I must wait quietly for the day of trouble, for the coming up of the people that in- vadeth u s . " (Hab. 3:16). [It is not in heathendom that this dread progress in crime and immorality is con- spicuous. It is in "Ch r i s t e n d om ." It is an apostasy. It is chiefly due to the re- vised theology; that gospel which is " a n - other gospel" and no gospel; which ig- nores man's juridical, or law, status before What then must sin be? in the sight of God! Consider sin in ord inary Christians. See all. there is in the heart of such a Christian, who may, how- ever, be sincere; see all there is of latent sin, of hidden corruption, of secret infec- tion, which, if the heart were suddenly laid open before us, would inspire us with dreadful horror, provided we were capable of feeling the horror of sin; that is to say if we were capable of feeling all the holiness of the law of God, and all the holiness this law requires. And then con- sider sin in men of the world, who are plunged in sin; whomever since they came into the world have drank it in like water; who breathe it like air; who are inwardly composed of sin; whose minds are so completely enveloped in sin, that no ray of vivifying, sanctifying light has ever crossed them. What an abyss, what a sepulchre, what a sight for the eyes of God, are men, thousands, millions of men, spread over the whole world, in whom nothing is to be found but this frightful , sin. of which they have at the most but a
GOD, the awful and almighty JU DGT3 of heaven and earth; which preaches a mere moral and sentimental relationship to JE- HOVAH, and denies the fact that man has offended the majestic Personality whose righteous will is the eternal law of the universe, to be maintained though the heavens fall. Men have forgotten the sig- *. nificance of "ought." They have forgot- ' ten that sin ought to be punished, and that what ought to be will be; that indiffer- ence to, and defiance of the Righteous One cannot go on with impunity; The fearful result is the "conscience seared as with a hot i r o n ," branded by Satan, who has " t h e c i n c h" on his own. And this is wit- nessed by the mad rush after pleasure of every description by men and women, by young and old, and in vicious and crim- inal self indulgence and insane revenge. There is no remedy but a return to the old proclamation of a Just God to hell doomed sinners in the doctrin es of the Cross, which proclaim the curse of sin, and the grace of salvation. J. H. S.l to them by God, to beseech them t o ' t u r n- to Him, but who still remain in this dread- ful abominable state before Him! Sin in the best Christians, sin in the Church, sin in the world—O my friends, what misery! What sin! This is what Jesus Christ saw when He came down from heaven to save us. We did not know it, but He felt it for us and this is what gave Him strength to bear the anguish of the cross, the sufferings of Gethsemane, the combat in the desert, and all the humiliation that preceded it, and which, as it were, formed His whole life. And now the sufferings that He endured for us must become our standard of. the enormity of sin in His sight, and the depth of the abyss from which He drew us. Not one of us has any idea—no, my friends, not one of us has any idea—of what sin is. Not one of us knows what sin is, be- cause not one of us knows fully the Saviour, or His sufferings, or His love. Let us be assured that we can learn this o n l 7 in the Scriptures. Our own pergonal
Sin.
By Adolphe Monod. How horrible vague feeling, which now and then is sent
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