I was asking just now. Can there ever have been
a time in the history of the world, when it was need-
70 TEE CONVICTION OF SIN.
fill that the Spirit of God should come down from
Heaven to convince the world of sin ? But may we
not with better reason reverse the question, and ask,
Has there ever been a time in the history of the
world, when it was not needful that the Spirit of God
should come down from heaven to convince the world
of sin ? a time when the \vorld has been, or could
have been, convinced of sin by any lesser power ?
Nay, has there ever been a single man, from the days
of Adam until now, who has not needed that the
Spirit of God should come to him to convince him
of sin ? Has there ever been a single man, who has
been able to find out the sinfulness of sin by himself,
of his own accord, at his own prompting, with no
other guide than his own heart and understanding?
Or, ā to bring the question home to ourselves, ā are
there any of you, my brethren, who have been con-
vinced of sin ? I trust in God, there are many, very
many. For, unless you have been convinced of sin,
you can never have entered beyond the outskirts of
the Kingdom of Heaven. If you have not expe-
rienced that conviction, if you do not feel it now, the
Gospel, it is most certain, cannot to you be the wis-
dom and the power of God unto salvation ; Christ
Jesus cannot have been made your Wisdom and
Righteousness and Sanctification and Redemption.
A man who had been born in a prison, and had spent
his whole life in it, might not be aware that there
was any thing peculiarly dismal in his lot : but should
he be delivered from his prison, he could never forget
that he had once been a captive, and now is free.
Therefore he who knows not that he once was in
bonds, must still be in them. At all events how many
THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 71
soever there may be among yon, Avho have indeed
been convinced of sin, ā and God grant that there
may be very many, and that their conviction may
daily become deeper, and that their number may
continually increase ! ā you however that have been
so already, by \vhom were you convinced ? Not by
yourselves assuredly. You rather fought against the
conviction, at one time struggled to refute it, at
another tried to evade it by all manner of excuses,
often, it may be for years, have driven it from your
thoughts. Not by your own consciences. If they
ever flattered, you listened to theiu gladly ; if they
reproved, you turned away. Not by any teachers or
monitors with whom this world has supplied you.
The pride and shame of the natural man revolt
against the thought of a human eye spying into the
dark places of his heart, and, since in some things
such monitors must needs be mistaken, in others will
ever be too harsh, comforts itself with the persuasion
that the partial error in the indictment vitiates it al-
together. Nor have you been convinced of sin even
by the word of Life, full of life and truth and warn-
ing and admonition as it is, which has been stored
up for us in the Bible. Any one of these witnesses
luay indeed have been the means employed in work-
ing the conviction in you ; but none of them can
have wrought it, any more than a hammer can strike,
without a living hand to wield it. Only when
wielded by the arm of the Comforter, is the word of
God indeed like a hammer, that breaks the stony
crust of the natural heart in pieces. If your con-
viction has been effectual, ā if it has pierced through
the depths of your soul, ā if it has laid hold on your
72 THE COXVICTIOX OF SIN.
Will, and stripped off its tough scales, and made it bow
its stiff neck, and taught it to shrink from the sin of
which it has been convinced, and to love and to seek
after the beauty of holiness, ā that conviction must
have come to you from above ; it must have been
wrought in you by the Spirit of God.
Yet we too have still the same witnesses to con-
vince us of sin, that w^ere abiding among mankind
in ages of yore, before the coming of the Saviour.
We have the voice of Conscience sighing through
every fresh crack that we make in God's image in
our hearts, and conspiring with our Reason and
Imagination, and every other nobler faculty, to ad-
monish us that we are betraying our duty, that w^e
are outraging our better feelings, that we are mar-
ring our tiaie, aboriginal nature, ā to admonish us
that we are polluting our souls, and withering and
rotting our hearts. But is this enough to convince
a man of sin ? Is it enough to produce that strong,
living, practical persuasion of the hatefulness of sin,
and of our being in its hateful bondage, which alone
can be called conviction ? Alas ! Conscience is so
wasted by year long neglect, and crushed by reiter-
ated violation, that it scarcely ever utters its warn-
ings and reproofs, except against fresh overt acts of
sin. It seldom takes notice of our habitual sins :
still less does it rouse us to contend against that sin-
fulness, which is inwrought in the natural heart.
And what is the power of Conscience, even against
open outbursts of sin ? Does not the drunkard
know, if he will but consider that he is degi'ading
himself below the beasts of the field ? Does not he
know that he is quenching his reason, that he is
THE COXVICTIOX OF SIN. 73
blinding the light of his understanding, that he is
cankering all his better feelings, that he is giving up
the reins of his will to any fierce passion which may-
chance to seize on them, that he is sowing the seeds
of all manner of diseases, and provoking Death to
come and reap the crop ? And yet, certain and
indubitable as this is, the knowledge may not im-
probably never have constrained him to drink a
single glass the less : nay, he is just as likely to
drinJv the more for it, that he may smother, and
harden himself against the qualms it gives him.
Docs not the libertine and the adulterer know, that
he is defiling himself, and defiling the partner in his
crime, ā that he is defiling her whom he pretends,
and may perchance believe that he loves, with the
foulest and most ignominious impurity ? Does not
he know that he is snapping the holy bond, by which
alone the families of manldnd are held together in
peace and happiness ? Does not he know that he is
rudely tearing off the blossoms of that one fair plant,
which our first parents brought with them out of
Paradise, the sacred plant of pure conjugal love ?
And yet, the more atrocious the crime, the pm-er the
happiness he is blasting, the more innocent the vic-
tim, the greedier, the more impetuous, the more sin-
thirsty he will be. What avails it that Conscience
should tell her beads ? he goes on sinning all the
while. No, my brethren ; Conscience assuredly has
no power to convince sinners of sin. When she is
uttering her most righteous words, she often is only
casting pearls before swine. The passions of the
carnal mind are fretted and irritated by the sight of
7
74 THE COXVICTIOX OF SIN.
what is so unlike themselves, and trample them im-
patiently in the mire.
Thus powerless is Conscience for the warfare
against sin. It will indeed lift itself up for a while,
if it has been rightly trained, to resist the first en-
croaches of sin. As the waters gather around, and
begin to heave and swell, it struggles for a while to
keep its head above them : but the sti'uggles become
fainter and fainter, while the waters rush on more
fiercely and tumultuously, until at length it sinks
beneath them. Whatever strength it may have,
independently of Christianity, is confined to a very
few choice spirits. In the great body of manldnd it
is all but extinct : and, where it is not so, it does not
speak of sin and sinfulness, but rather of virtue and
the dignity of human nature. In all too it greatly
needs guidance, instruction, illumination : for its
voice is merely a kind of tribunician veto, forbidding
that which is recognized to be wrong : but it has no
vote in the council of the mind, no discernment in
itself to determine what is wrong. For this knowl-
edge it is dependent on oui* other facu^lties, intellec-
tual and moral : and they, although they were all
designed to be servants and witnesses of Righteous-
ness, and though they cannot fulfil their constitutive
idea, unless they are so, yet are too easily perverted
and depraved into the servants and witnesses of
Unrighteousness. The Imagination, which ought
to purify our affections, and to raise us up above the
narrownesses of the Understanding, and the debase-
ment of our carnal natm*e, may too easily become
the inflamer of oiu passions. Being the chief con-
THE COXYICTIOX OF SIX. 75
nective link between the visible world and the invis-
ible, ordained " to glance from heaven to earth, from
earth to heaven," it still often turns away from its
appointed task of spiritualizing the senses, and
stoops to the ignoble drudgery of sensualizing the
spirit. And that the Understanding is over-ready to
quit the straight road, and ^^Tiggle along the crooked
paths of evil, we learn from the example of the ser-
pent, that was more subtile than any beast of the
field ; an example which has had such hosts of fol-
lowers, that they who especially professed to be
teachers of ^^^sdom, became Sophists.
Or shall we say that the Law at all events must
needs be sufficient to convince the ^vorld of sin ?
For Ave too have the Law, speaking to us in divers
ways, and by divers voices. We have the LaAV of
God, the very same Law which was delivered to
Moses on the Mount. We have the Law of God,
as written in the ordinances of Nature, according to
which almost every sin is sure to be visited sooner
or later by some sort of punishment even in this
world. We have the Law of the land. We have
the Law of public opinion, by which many sins
are doomed to shame, by which many sinners are
branded and become outcasts. We have the Law
of human affection and esteem, whereby love and
friendship and honor are awarded to the amiable
and the deserving, and are forfeited by the unamia-
ble and the reprobate. We have the purest and
holiest of all Laws, the Law of the Gospel, with
all its comfortable assurances, and all its blessed
promises, the Law delivered on that INIount, which
spake better things than Sinai of old. But are any
76 THE CONVICTION OF SIN.
of these Laws sufficient to convince the world of
Bin ? No ; nor all of them put together. They
may convince the world of some sins. They may
make some persons abstain from some sins. But
they will never convince the world of sin, nor make
any one abstain from it altogether. One reason of
this is, that all these laws, except the last, set their
face only against certain sins, ā it may be graver
or lighter ones, more definite, or more comprehen-
sive, ā it may be against a greater or a less number
of them. But they do not set their face against sin
itself, as an indwelling disease in the heart, alto-
gether distinct from every outward act and mani-
festation. They do not attempt to grub up the
root of sin, and to clear away the multitudinous
fibres of that root spreading on every side, and
curling and t\,vining about every feeling and every
desire. They are content, some of them, with
lopping off the branches, others with hewing down
the stem. But sin is not like a fir, which has but
one stem, and which, if you cut it down, never
shoots up again. You cannot destroy it, as the
Asiatic king threatened to destroy Lampsacus,
niTvog Tqonov, at once, summarily, by an outward act,
by the axe or the sword. On the conti-ary, if you
merely cut it down, new suckers are sure to spring
from it, and it gets many stems instead of one : if
you merely prune the branches, it will soon become
more luxuriant than ever. So long as the evil spirit
is cast out by any other power than the Spirit of
God, ā so long as the house from which he is cast
out remains empty, and the Spirit of God does not
come to take up His abode in it, ā so long as it is
THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 77
merely swept and garnished, priding itself on its
own cleanness and neatness, ā so long is the casting
out of no avail. The evil spirit will assuredly come
back anon, with other spirits worse than himself.
In spite of all that Law can do, when destitute of
the higher sanctions of Religion, the vices of a
nation in the decrepitude of its civilization will be
far worse than those which stained it when first
emerging from barbarism.
The Law of Moses, as set forth in the Old
Testament, ^ve have already seen, cannot convince
mankind of sin. It forbids certain sinful acts. It
may withhold us from committing those acts by the
punishments it threatens. Or it enjoins certain ob-
servances, which however, as enjoined by Law, can
only be outward. But a man might keep all the
commandments of Moses : so far as the letter goes,
he might stick to the letter of the whole Law : and
yet he might wholly neglect the weightier matters
of it, justice and mercy. We are not told that the
Pharisee said what was not true, when he boasted
of his legal righteousness : we are not told that he
had broken any one of the commandments : the
Publican no doubt had: and yet the Pharisee in
God's eyes was a sight more offensive than the
Publican. For in the Pharisee, as in his whole
sect, we see the tendency of the Law, not to pro-
duce the conviction of sin in those who conformed
to it, but to puff them up with a vain persuasion
of righteousness, ā a tendency akin to that of the
Stoical philosophy, and shared by every kind of
righteousness, except that of faith. It is true that
St. Paul speaks of the Law as a schoolmaster to
78 THE COXYICTIOX OF SKsT.
lead us to Christ, and that the way in which it leads
us to Him, is by convincing us of sin, through our
inability to fulfil it. But this is only when the
length and breadth and depth of the Law is set
before tis by the Spirit of God, whereby we learn
how incapable we are of fulfilling it. St. Paul him-
self, until he received the conviction of the Spmt,
believed himself to be blameless in regard to legal
righteousness (Phil. iii. 6). When speaking a while
back of the commandments, I stopped short of the
tenth ; and it may perhaps have struck you that the
tenth commandment, even according to the mere let-
ter, does go further than the outward act, and lifts up
its voice against the sinful desire in the heart. Never-
theless the tenth commandment is far from enough
to convince the heart of sin. At the utmost it wiU
condemn our evil desires at the time when they are
grown to a head, and are tempting us to AATong oth-
ers. So long as they are pent up in our own bosoms,
so long as they do not amount to a wish of depriving
our neighbor of that which is his, our hearts wiU
readily believe that there is no harm in their evil de-
sires, ā that they may indulge in lust, so that it be
not after a neighbor's wife, ā that they may indulge
in covetousness, so that it be not after a neighbor's
propert}^ The Avorld swarms with the servants of
Mammon and of Ashtaroth, who do not feel that
there is any condemnation of their practices in the
letter of this commandment.
But if the Law of the Old Testament, ā that
LaAV by which man gained so much clearer, dis-
tincter, and fuller knowledge of sin, ā is insufficient
to convince the world of sin, much more must the
THE COXVICTIOX OF SIX. 79
same hold with regard to every form of hum?n Law.
All such Law deals solely with outward acts, with
those outward acts which are hurtful to society, its
end being the preservation of social order, and the
repression of whatever would infringe it : such acts
Law forbids under throat of punishment. This is
its only sanction, its only way of enforcing its com-
mands. If a man however be withheld from break-
ing the Law, if he be kept out of prison, by no higher
motive than the fear of punishment, he may be quite
as bad, if not worse, than many of those who are
cast into it. Although too the hatred of God against
sin be manifested in divers ways in the order of na-
tm-e, in the framework of society, in the principles
whereby men are guided in their dealings and feel-
ings toward each otiier, ā though some sins are pun-
ished almost infallibly by the loss of health and
strength, some by public shame and reproach, some
by the forfeiture of those joys which spring up under
the steps of such as walk along the path of life in
unity, ā still all this is very far from enough to con-
vince the world of sin. The various voices of the
world, which I have just mentioned, merely condemn
some sins, but take no account of others. Pain fol-
lows some sins : shame follows some sins : but some
are almost held in honor. Affection, in the present
irregular condition of men's hearts, is seldom meted
out with much regard to worth. In fact all these
Laws, and even the pure and holy Law of the Gos-
pel, may sound year after year through the hollow
caverns of our hearts, without awakening one spirit-
ual feeling in them, without stirring the waters so
that they shall rise through the network of weeds
80 THE CONVICTION OF SIN.
spread over thi'in, wlthont arousing any thing like
genuine shame, and lively eontrition and repentanec.
In that beautiful poem, which 1 have already cited,
by one of the meekest and holiest spirits who ever
adorned the Church of Christ upon earth, we have
an enumeration of the many graces wherewith God
surrounds and guards us in a Christian Ituid ; and at
the same time we are admonished how vain tliey all
are to convince us effectually of sin.
Lord, with what care hast Thou hepiit us louiul !
Parents first season us : then Schoohnasters
Deliver us to Laws : they send us bound
To Rules of Reason, holy Messengers,
Pulpits and Sundays, ā Sorrow dojrging Sin,
Atilictions sorted, Anguish of all sizes, ā
Fine nets and stratagems to cateh us in, ā
Bihles laid open, ā millions of Surprises, ā
Blessings beforehand, ā ties of Gratefulness, ā
The sound of Glory ringing in our ears, ā
"Without, our Shame, ā within, our Consciences, ā
Angels and CJrace, ā eternal Hopes and Fears.
Yet all these fences, and their whole array.
One cuuuiiig bosom sin blows ([uitc away.
It would take me too long, ā though tlie time
might not be ill spent, ā to go minutely through this
rich list of the graces and blessings, with which God
encompasses us from our cradle to our grave, for the
sake of et)nvineing us of sin, and of drawing us
away from it, from its slavery and its punishment,
from sin and death and hell, to the path of life and
the glories of heaven. Parents, with their ever-
watchful love, sheltering us under their wings until
we have strength to (juit our native nest, ā Teachers,
who train us in the way wherein we ai'e to walk,
and lit us for discerning it, ā T^aws, that set the mark
THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 81
of death upon sin, ā Reason, that would deliver us
from the mere bondage of La^v, and make the ser-
vice of duty a free and willing service, ā the messen-
gers of the Gospel sent into every corner of the land
to call us to the knowledge of God, and to the gi-ace
of Christ, ā the word of God proclaimed to His
people, when they are gathered together in His
house, ā Sundays, with their holy rest and peace,
their many heavenly voices, their prayers and sacra-
ments, ā the sorrow and abject misery which follow
at the heels of sin, ā the afflictions with which God
visits His children, sorted to suit their special needs,
and to unravel the cords with which the world holds
them down, ā anguish, greater or less, according as
we require it and have strength to bear it, ā the
delicate network of human order and earthly mo-
tives, which offer a kind of counterpart to the order
and motives of heaven, and which check us against
our will in manifold unthought of ways when we
should otherwise rush into sin, ā the Bible laid open
in every house, and meeting our eyes at every turn, ā
the millions, yes, the millions of sm'prises, showered
like stars over the face of life, and evermore remind-
ing us of God's wondrous goodness and mercy, and
warning us to think of death, and teaching us the
ruin of sin, ā the blessings which are poured out
upon us beforehand, as a foretaste of the joys of
heaven, long ere we have learned to love God and to
serve Him, blessings of love and innocent gladness
and a peaceful conscience, bestowed so bountifully
even on childhood, ā the ties of gratefulness, as well
as of duty, whereby God makes the voice of nature
herself declare that we must needs love Him who
82 THE CONVICTION OF SIN.
has so loved us, ā the song of the angels ringing in
our ears, Glory to God in the hig-Jiest, and telling us
of the glory in store for those who have found peace
through the good- will of the Eternal Father, ā the
shame which pursues sin without, ā the stings of
Conscience within, ā the many servants of God that
are sent to comfort us with their timely ministra-
tions, ā the Grace bestowed on us in baptism, and
which the Holy Spmt, if we hinder not His purpose,
would ever increase and strengthen in our souls,* ā
and finally, in order that we may not be dazzled or
crushed by the fleeting hopes and fears of this pre-
sent life, the hopes and fears of eternity, ā these are
the cherubim wherewith God has surrounded our
Eden, to keep the Tempter from approaching it.
Yet all these fences, and theii" whole aiTay,
One cunning bosom sin blows quite away.
Seeing therefore how utterly powerless every thing
human is, how powerless every Law^ is, even the holy
Law of God, to convince mankind effectually of
sin, ā that is, to open our eyes, so that we shall see
all its loathsomeness, and all its snares, so that we
shall see its power over us and in us, and the living
death which that power brings upon all such as yield
themselves to it, and may thus be led to flee from it
as from a pestilence, and to guard against it as we
should if a plague were creeping and sweejiing
through the land, ā it is a work by no means un-
worthy of the Spirit of God, ā for it is a work which
nothing but the Spirit of God can accomplish, ā to
convince the world of sin. For, although even in the
* Sec Preface to American Edition.
THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 83
natural man there is a spirit that lusteth against the .
flesli, yet the flesh in the natural man is from the
first far more powerful than the spirit, and is always
lusting against it : and the flesh is daily fed and fat-
tened by the world, which affords slender noui'ish-
ment to the spirit : and every victory it gains makes
it stronger and prouder, so that the spirit at length is
almost extinguished within us, even as a glowAvorm
would be extinguished by falling into a muddy pool.
Yet, unless man were convinced of sin, the salvation
WTOUght by Christ would be of no effect. Without
this conviction by the Spirit, in vain would the Son
of God have come in the flesh ; in vain would He
have died on the cross for the sins of mankind : man-
kind would not, could not have been saved. They
could not, because they would not. Unless a man be
weU aware that he is laboring under a disease, he
will not think of asking for the remedies which might
cure him : nor wiU he take them, although you hold
them out to him, and although their efficacy may have
been proved in a multitude of cases, more especially
if they happen to be distasteful to his vitiated palate.
If he .mistakes the convulsive fits of a fever for the
vigor of health, he will not consent to practise that
abstinence by which liis fever might be subdued.
Nor, unless we are fully convinced that our souls are
tormented by a deadly, clinging disease, and that no
earthly power or skill can heal them, shall we think
of applying earnestly for health to the only Physi-
cian of souls.
This brings me to consider, though it must needs
be briefly and very imperfectly, in what manner the
Spirit convinces the man of his disease, in what man-
84 THE CONVICTIOX OF SIX.
ner He convinces the world of sin. If a man is a
prey to a mortal disease, which breaks out in blotches
and sores, there is no use in merely plastering over
the sores : j^ou must go to the root of the disease,
and attack it in its strong holds. Else, being checked
from venting itself outwardly, it will rage the fierce-
lier within. Just so it is with sin. There is little
profit in telling a man, who is walking after the lusts
of the flesh, that such or such an act is wrong. Un-
less you go to the root of sin within him, from which