all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men" (Rom. i. 18). God's displeasure, when it is realized in its true meaning, is itself the direst punishment. Our true life is in God. Our blessedness is in communion with Him. But let us be separated from Him, let conscience witness to the divine displeasure and show us the clouded face of our Father, and no punishment could be greater. There is no expression in the Bible which more vividly describes the extreme of punishment than those dreadful words, "the wrath of the Lamb." But the divine displeasure is only the root of punishment. It displays itself in outward acts. Here we have first those natural consequences which God has attached to sin, and which are none the less a divine punishment because they have that uniformity which belongs to the ordinary operations of nature. Death is the most notable and certain of these consequences, and suffering of body and mind is the most cominon form in which they are manifested. Then there are the more special divine inflictions or judgments which are visited upon sin through God's punitive providence.

In the background of punishment, at once natural consequence and divine infliction, is the suffering of the other world, in which the soul is separated from God and the society of the good, and left to its own dark thoughts and deeds. Punishment is commensurate with guilt. It is retributive, and for every sin there is a corresponding recompense of retribution. It has been said that every sin deserves eternal punishment; but such an assertion seems to me untrue, as it is certainly unscriptural, for it reduces all sins to a common level, and makes no dif ference between the momentary selfishness of a child and the black treason of a Judas. But every sin has a punishment proportioned to its guilt. The object of punishment is, primarily, the salvation of the sinner. The divine love finds expression in the divine displeasure and manifests itself in outward punishment, that it may bring back

the wayward child to his home and his Father's heart. Punishment in its first intent is a blessing in disguise. But there is a limit to the divine forbearance, and when punishment fails to fulfil its primary purpose, when the sinner obstinately refuses to return to God, punishment enters upon another phase and exercises another function: it becomes God's means of nullifying the evil effects of sin and putting the sinner in a position where he can do no more mischief. In saying this, I do not mean to imply that this final punishment is not retributive. All punishment is retributive, but this is also coercive and repressive.

But the mention of the primary office of punishment, as intended to bring the soul back to God, suggests another fact or moral principle closely related to guilt and punishment. I refer to atonement. The sinner is separated from God by his guilt and under punishment. How shall he be brought back? What is needed is reconciliation. It takes two to make a quarrel, and it also takes two to make up the quarrel. Now between man and God, as between man and man, there can be no reconciliation without atonement. Some amends must be made for the wrong done, some reparation rendered, some satisfaction given. This opens the way for reconciliation and affords a just ground for it. Atonement is not the same as punishment, though the two are very closely related. Punishment is inflicted by the one wronged, atonement is rendered by the wrongdoer. The sinner bears his punishment, he renders atonement. Atonement is in its deepest essence a matter of the sinner's will, as punishment is in its deepest essence a matter of the divine will. Atonement may express itself in some outward act or gift or offering, but the real atonement is a spiritual offering, a sacrifice of the heart. Punishment and atonement come close together when, as is sometimes the case, the atonement consists in the patient bearing of the punishment with full acknowledgment of its justice. When atonement does its work, that is, when

it is accepted, the result is reconciliation, displeasure is turned into favor. The outward effects of punishment may still continue, but when the displeasure is gone, the root of the punishment has been cut off and it ceases in any real sense to be punishment. In such a case "there is no more condemnation," but peace and blessedness. I have spoken of this subject of atonement at this stage of our inquiries only that I may show the sinner's attitude toward God and his need of atonement if he is to be reconciled to God. We shall consider hereafter his inability to render God any adequate atonement, and still later we shall investigate that central and wonderful truth of the Gospel, the doctrine of Christ's vicarious atonement, God's way of salvation for the sinner.

Such is sin-the anomaly of the universe, the blot upou the creation which God made very good, the disgrace of mankind. The more we study God's Word, and the further we advance in Christian experience, the profounder will become our sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin. When men begin to make light of it, to call it by mild. names, to regard it as infirmity and to ignore its guilt, they have entered upon a path that leads away from the Gospel. Christianity measures the guilt and the baleful importance of sin by the fact that God Himself became incarnate and in the person of Jesus Christ died upon the cross for our redemption from it. When we pray, "Thy kingdom come," we pray that sin may cease, that sinners may become reconciled to God, that Satan may be trampled under feet. What we need as Christians is to see sin as it is, in all its awful evil, that so we may know what Christ is and join him in his fight against it. If the Christian's work in the world may be expressed in its positive aspect as the service of God in His kingdom, it may be expressed negatively, with equal truth, as a warfare with Christ and all good beings as our fellow-soldiers, against sin.

XVIII.

SIN AND MAN'S RACE RELATIONS

IF you wish to know whether a man is a theologian, turn to his Greek Testament, and if it opens of its own accord to the fifth chapter of Romans, and you find the page worn and brown, you may safely set him down as a devotee of the sacred science. Upon the twelfth verse libraries have been written. It belongs to a passage

which, more than any other in the Bible, has been the occasion of theological controversy. The interpretation of its last word has furnished the point of divergence to the great schools of divinity. Let us not, however, suppose that the controversies which have been waged about this verse are to be measured in importance by the place they occupy in histories of Christian doctrine. On the contrary, while they have brought much truth to light, and have done much to preserve precious Gospel teachings, they have also done much to discredit theology. In the silence of the Bible theologians often run riot. It has been so here. A simple fact of vast importance is taught in this verse, and has been left without explanation. The fact we need to hold fast, but we should respect the reticence of revelation, and if we speculate and theorize, we should hold our theories lightly, and with tolerance for the theories of others, ready to confess that we know in part and prophesy in part.

We have considered the nature of sin as it appears in the individual. Now we have to look at it in the race and to examine its effects upon the individual in his connection with the race.

I. The whole race is infected with sin-all men are sinners. To prove this from the Bible I do not need to cite particular texts of Scripture, like Solomon's worde "There is no man that sinneth not " (1 Kings viii. 46), or James's, "In many things we all stumble" (iii. 2), or to refer to those wonderful first three chapters of the Epistle to the Romans in which Paul shows by incontestable facts that Jews and Gentiles alike "have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. iii. 23). For the universality of sin is one of the postulates of the Gospel system. It is implied in the scriptural teaching respecting the universal need of salvation, in the Old Testament law, in the institution of sacrifice, in the Jewish rite of circumcision, in the doctrine of atonement by Christ, in the call to repentance, in the universal offer of the Gospel, in the ordinance of baptism. One man, and one only, Jesus the Christ, has lived without sin. His holiness is the pure white light in which every life appears dark and spotted. There are those whom the Bible does indeed call righteous, but a closer examination of the facts shows that, as Calvin says (Com. on Psalm v. 12), they "are not so called on account of the merit of their works, but because they aspire after righteousness." When sometimes in a moment of self-confidence a Christian is tempted to think that he has passed beyond the power of sin, his presumptuous thought is checked by the stern words of John, "If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John i. 8). All normal Christian experience confirms the scriptural doctrine upon this point. The nearer a man gets to Christ, the more he feels the power of the Holy Spirit, the more profound becomes his realization of his own sin, and the more surely does he recog nize the same evil in all his fellow-men. Nor need we appeal merely to the experience of the Christian; the common consciousness of mankind affirms the universality of sin. Heathenism, with all the imperfection of its cen