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nesses, at once, and victims, of the mournful prevalence of this great evil.

But all the injury, great and terrible as it is, which the sinner does or can inflict upon others, is not equal to the injury that he inflicts upon himself. The evil that he does is, in almost all cases, the greater the nearer it comes to himself; greater to his friends than to society at large; greater to his family than to his friends; and so it is greater to himself than it is to any other. Yes, it is in his own nature, whose glorious traits are dimmed and almost blotted out, whose pleading remonstrances are sternly disregarded, whose immortal hopes are rudely stricken down-it is in his own nature that he does a work so dark and mournful, and so fearful, that he ought to shudder and weep to think of it.

Does any one say "he is glad that it is so; glad that it is himself he injures most?" What a feeling, my brethren, of disinterested justice is that! How truly may it be said, that there is something good even in bad men. Yes, doubtless, there are those who in their remorse at an evil deed would be glad if all the injury and suffering could be their own. I rejoice în that testimony. But does that feeling make it any less true,-does not that feeling make it more true, that such a nature is wronged by base and selfish passions? Or, because it is a man's self-because it is his own soul that he has most injured,-because he has not only wronged others, but ruined himself,-is his course any the less guilty, or unhappy, or unnatural?

I say unnatural; and this is a point on which I wish to insist, in the consideration of that wrong which the moral offender does to himself. The sinner, I say, is

to be pronounced an unnatural being. He has cast off the government of those powers of his nature, which, as being the loftiest, have the best right to reign over him-the government, that is to say, of his intellectual and moral faculties, and has yielded himself to meaner appetites. Those meaner appetites, though they belong to his nature, have no right, and he knows they have no right, to govern him. The rightful authority, the lawful sovereignty belongs, and he knows that it belongs, not to sense, but to conscience. To rebel against this is to sin against Nature. It is to rebel against Nature's order. It is to rebel against the government that God has set up within him. It is to obey, not venerable authority, but the faction which his passions have made within him.

Thus violence and misrule are always the part of transgression. Nay, every sin-I do not mean now the natural and unavoidable imperfection of a weak and ignorant being, but every wilful moral offence is a monstrous excess and excrescence in the mind, a hideous deformity, a loathsome disease, a destruction, so far as it goes, of the purposes for which our nature was made. As well might you say of the diseased plant or tree, which is wasting all its vigour on the growth of one huge and unsightly deformity, that it is in a natural condition. Grant that the natural powers of the plant or tree are converted, or rather perverted to this misuse, and helped to produce this deformity; yet the deformity is not natural. Grant that sin is the possible or supposable, or that it is the actual, nay, and in this world, the common, result of moral freedom. It has been argued, I know, that what is common is natural; and grant that too. But sin, we

believe, is not common in the whole moral universe. It is not the common result of universal moral action. And it is evidently not the just and legitimate result; it is not the fair and natural result; it violates all moral powers and responsibilities. If the mechanism of a vast manufactory were thrown into sudden disorder, the power which propels it, and a power, if you please, which the artificer had placed in it,―might, indeed, spread destruction throughout the whole work; but would that be the natural course of things; the result for which the fabric was made? So passion, not in its natural state, but still natural passion, in its unnatural state of excess and fury, may spread disorder and destruction through the moral system; but wreck and ruin are not the proper order of whether material or moral.

any nature,

The idea against which I am now contending, that sin is natural to us, and, in fact, that nothing else is natural-this popular and prevailing idea, is one, it seems to me, so fearful and fatal in its bearings-is one of such comprehensive and radical mischief, as to infect the religious state of all mankind, and to overshadow, almost with despair, the moral prospects of the world. There is no error, theological or moral, that appears to me so destructive as this. There is nothing that lies so near the very basis of all moral reform and spiritual improvement as this.

If it were a matter of mere doctrine it would be of less consequence. But it is a matter of habitual feeling, I fear, and of deep-settled opinion. The world,. alas! is not only in the sad and awful condition of being filled with sin, and filled with misery in conse quence, but of thinking that this is the natural order of

things. Sin is a thing of course; it is taken for granted that it must exist very much in the way that it does; and men are everywhere easy about it,—they are everywhere sinking into worldliness and vice, as if they were acting out the principles of their moral constitution, and almost as if they were fulfilling the will of God. And thus it comes to pass, that that which should fill the world with grief, and astonishment, and horror, beyond all things else most horrible and lamentable, is regarded with perfect apathy, as a thing natural and necessary. Why, my brethren, if but the animal creation were found, on a sudden, disobedient to the principles of their nature, if they were ceasing to regard the guiding instincts with which they are endowed, and were rushing into universal madness, the whole world would stand aghast at the spectacle. But multitudes in the rational creation disobey a higher law and forsake a more sacred guidance; they degrade themselves below the beasts, or make themselves as entirely creatures of this world; they plunge into excess and profligacy; they bow down divine and immortal faculties to the basest uses, and there is no wonder, there is no horror, there is no consciousness of the wrong done to themselves. They say, "it is the natural course of things," as if they had solved the whole problem of moral evil. They say, "it is the way of the world," almost as if they thought it was the order of Providence. They say, "it is what men are," almost as if they thought it was what men were designed to be. And thus ends their comment, and with it all reasonable endeavour to make themselves better and happier.

If this state of prevailing opinion be as certainly

erroneous as it is evidently dangerous, it is of the last importance, that every resistance, however feeble, should be offered to its fatal tendencies. Let us therefore consider, a little more in detail, the wrong which sin does to human nature. I say. then, that it does a wrong to every natural faculty and power of the mind.

Sin does a wrong to reason. There are instances, and not a few, in which sin, in various forms of vice and vanity, absolutely destroys reason. There are other and more numerous cases in which it employs that faculty, but employs it in a toil most degrading to its nature. There is reasoning, indeed, in the mind of a miser; the solemn arithmetic of profit and loss. There is reasoning in the schemes of unscrupulous ambition; the absorbing and agitating intrigue for office or honour. There is reasoning upon the modes of sensual pleasure; and the whole power of a very acute mind is sometimes employed and absorbed in plans, and projects, and imaginations of evil indulgence. But what an unnatural desecration is it, for reason—sovereign, majestic, all-comprehending reason -to contract its boundless range to the measure of what the hand can grasp to be sunk so low as to idolize outward or sensitive good; to make its god, not indeed of wood or stone, but of a sense or a nerve! What a prostration of immortal reason is it, to bend its whole power to the poor and pitiful uses which sinful indulgence demands of it!

Sin is a kind of insanity. So far as it goes, it makes man an irrational creature: it makes him a fool. The consummation of sin is ever, and in every form, the extreme of folly. And it is that most pitiable folly, which is puffed up with arrogance and self-sufficiency.

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