A prize -winning sermon

“As righteousness tendeth to life: so he that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death.” - Prov. 11:19.

“Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” James 1:15.

In a continent there are rivers, in a garden- flowers, in a forest-trees, in cityspires, in a library-books, in a jungle - animals, in a house-windows, in a country-roads. So also in the dictionary there are words- weighty and mighty words- I find to point our minds to the dreadful fact of sin in human life.

First I use the word

I- BAFFLED

Baffled am I, as one blinded by blustery blizzard, in using words potent and trenchant enough to fully describe the blight of sin, the plague of the world -manifest inwardly in discrowned faculties, in unworthy love in brutalized spirits in ears deaf to the voice of God.

No man can make nutmegs out of pine knots, rivet a nail in pudding, get music from wooden bells, warm a house with blocks of ice, build a house on a nest of eggs, plant a garden on the lava streams of Vesuvius, quench a conflagration with one drop of water, tunnel a mountain with a toothpick, or paddle a coffin across the ocean with an oar, or with one drop of oil “quiet Cretin seas when vexed by warring winds”.

You cannot with words set forth the tragic blight of sin. No more than Delilah could bind Samson with green withes no more than lame Mephibosheth could carry away the gates of Gaza, no more than King Pharaoh could cook all the frogs that invaded Egypt can speaker or writer set forth with words sin’s tragic blight worse on human hearts than rust on steel, more destructive in human life than moths on silk garments more contaminating to human souls than sewage in a city. To expect to have an echo without a voice, to hold the wind in a net, to hiss and yawn at the same time, or for one buried alive to lift his gravestone and carry it away.

Though there is a growing disregard for sin- sure sign of the decline of spiritual religion-false conceptions of sin are as fatal to human life as for a fly to mistake a spider’s web for a full set of whiskers. Though sin has become sociably popular those who believe that it does not carry with it the doom of individual and national calamity are as foolish in their belief as those who believe a snake can hatch a rope-as foolish as those who expect no breakage when they throw missiles at a mouse amid priceless pieces of porcelain. All who do not believe that “the wages of sin is death” and that sin is a wild Absalom of rebellion, a sullen Macbeth of villainy, a bold Belshazzar of irreverence, a merciless Nero of evil, a painted Jezebel of murder, a sneering Judas of treachery, “a bloodhound of perdition that never leaves the trail", a universal abuse of all that is holy are as foolish and grotesquely absurd as those who believe they can jump away from their shadows and paint sounds and wash black men into whiteness and put the whole music of the spheres into one sonata. All who have ever become slaves or victims of sin know sin changes the open palm of friendship into the clenched fist of hatred and puts glass eyes where eyes of compassion should be.

Shakespeare says: “Men bring a minute of mirth who wail a week.” All who by experience have found that the petals on sins roses are all thorns have learned that all who dance to sin's music engage in the dance of death and authenticate Shakespeare’s statement.

Millions know that nobody wins who plays with sin, who throws away in Folly’s Court and carnal pleasure’s markets the wealth of love and life. Though we cannot write or speak fully of sin’s wreck and ruin, it writes itself in all our social disorders and wrongs and crimes. The very newspapers drip red with it and are stained with the foul dirt of it.

Though we cannot tell how the first thistle did bud and bloom on the rosebush of a pure soul or how the unfallen human nature furnished any soil congenial for the seeds of evil though all questions about the mystery and nature of sin run beyond our ken and drop into depths beneath our plummets, though the sense of sin is declining, though there are euphemisms used to lessen the horrors of sin, though one theory denies sin outright and resolves it wholly into a traditional illusion and delusion, the reality of sin remains.

Determinism, psychological and pantheistic, cuts sin up by the roots. Sin thus becomes a misfortune and not a fault-and the sinner is a victim and not an offender. He has not done wrong, but wrong has been done to him. He does not owe God an apology, but God owes him one. This view cancels all sense of sin and hardens the heart against it. Though determinism loses its wild tongue dripping with the spittle and vomit of falsehood, still the fact of sin has not been eradicated from human nature.

Though some deny that sin is “the sum of all villainies,” still sin is the most frightful fact in our world and writes its ruin in a thousand ways. Sin is the awful tragedy of the universes and only fools make mock of it. Hell, because of sin, cannot be dug out of the cosmic constitution or its fires be quenched. God cannot overlook sin and be a respectable God. The intergrity of the universe will not tolerate it. God will not let sin mock Him, and it is still an eternal law of life that “the wages of sin is death.”

But, though we are baffled as to depicting sin, yet we think of the word.

II -BURST

By burst we mean the truth that from Hell’s seething ocean sin burst upon this world in Eden’s garden at the foot of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. No bubbling spring but a raging torrent, it swept through the world untill there is no neighborhood from Adam until now that has not felt, and does not feel, its pollution-even as Munsey preached.
(to be continued)