CHAPTER III.

ERROR AND SIN.

I.

OUR academic moralists are commonly averse to look at or consider these two topics. But if there be truth in our world, there is also error; if there be good, there is also evil. Those who profess to expound our nature must look at the one alternative as well as the other. Nor let it be said, with Augustine, that sin is a mere negation. Malice and deceit and adultery are as much realities as goodwill, integrity, and purity.

I have been arguing that our intellectual and moral intuitions are all necessary and universal. This doctrine, however, must not be so stated as to imply that it is impossible for man to fall into error, or for the conscience to come to a false decision, or for human beings to commit sin.

That men do, in fact, fall into error, is evident from this single circumstance, that scarcely two persons can be brought to accord in opinion, even on points of importance. In regard, indeed, to necessary truths, there are certain restrictions laid on the mind. No man who considers the subject can be made to believe that two straight lines will enclose a space. Still, even in regard to such truths, the mind has a capacity of ignorance and of error; it may refuse to consider them, or, mistaking their nature, it may make statements inconsistent with them without knowing it. Those who have gone through the demonstrations of Euclid are constrained to believe

the truth of every proposition, but the truths have never so much as been presented to the minds of the great majority of mankind, and many persons might easily be persuaded that the angles of certain triangles are equal to less or to more than two right angles. But whatever the restrictions laid on our liability to error in necessary truth, there seem to be no limits to man's exposure to mistakes in other matters. There is boundless room for them in all conclusions which are dependent on experiential evidence, especially when the proof is of a cumulative character. In all such matters the mind may refuse to look at the probation, or it may take only what is favorable to one side, and may arrive at most erroneous and preposterous results. This liability to error is apt to appear in all affairs in which we are under the influence of pride or party spirit, or a biassed and prejudiced disposition; in short, wherever there is moral evil swaying the will, and leading it to look on evidence in a partial spirit. If I were immediately cognizant of the heart of a good man, and could see the springs that move him to benevolence and self-sacrifice, I should be constrained to approve of him; but I may be prepossessed against him, and I twist and torture facts till I bring myself to believe that he is doing all this from a deep designing selfishness. I believe that while ignorance may arise from the finite nature of our faculties, and from a limited means of knowledge, positive error does in every case proceed directly or indirectly from a corrupted will, leading us to pronounce a hasty judgment without evidence, or to seek partial evidence on the side to which our inclinations lean. A thoroughly pure and candid will would, in my opinion, preserve man, even with his present limited faculties, not indeed from ignorance on many points, but from all possibility of positive mistakes.

But the question may be asked, how is the existence of sin, and of wrong decisions of the conscience, consistent with the necessity which attaches to our moral convictions? The difficulty can easily be removed so far as the existence of sin is concerned; for sin must ever proceed from the region of the will, which is free to do good, but also free to do evil. It may be necessary for the conscience to decide in a certain manner, but it is not necessary that the will should do what the conscience commands. And it is to the influence exercised by a disobedient will upon the conscience that I attribute all the errors in its decisions. In whatever way we may reconcile them, these two facts can each be established on abundant evidence: the one, that in the primitive exercises of conscience there is a conviction of necessity; the other, that the conscience is liable to manifold perversions. Care must be taken not to state the two so as to make the one appear to be inconsistent with the other; both can be so enunciated as to make all seeming contradiction vanish. If we look directly and fairly at moral excellence, the mind must declare it to be good. But then, first, the mind may refuse to look at it at all; and, secondly, it may not regard it in the right light. If we look upon the living and the true God in the proper aspect, we must acknowledge that we owe him love and obedience; but then we may refuse to look upon him, we may contrive to live without God, and God may not be in all our thoughts; or we may fashion to ourselves a Deity with a degraded nature, making him one altogether like unto ourselves, and then the proper awe and affection will no longer rise in our bosoms.

It is to be taken into account that, while our decisions upon the acts presented may be intuitively certain, yet that the acts are not intuitively presented, and may be

very inaccurately presented. The conscience, it is to be remembered, is a reflex faculty, judging of objects presented to it by the other powers, and the representation given it may be incorrect. The liability to deception and perversion is increased by the circumstance that the states of mind with which our voluntary acts are mixed up are of a very complicated character. There is room in this way for giving a wrong account of our actual state of mind at any given moment. I contribute a sum of money to relieve a person in distress; I may do so from very mixed or doubtful motives; but I am naturally led by self-love to look on the motive as good, and then I cherish a feeling of self-approbation, in which I should by no means have been justified had I taken a searching view of the whole mental state. Again, I find a neighbor doing the very same act, and I am led by jealousy to attribute selfish motives to him, and I condemn him in a judgment which may be equally unwarranted. By such seductions as these the mind may become utterly perverted in the representations which it gives or receives, and in the consequent moral judgments which it pronounces. In the case of these perversions of the conscience, as in the case of the errors of the understanding (as we have previously seen), the evil is to be traced to the will refusing to give obedience to its proper law, and conjuring up a series of deceptions to excuse and defend itself. The intuition is after all there, but it is difficult in a mind perverted by a corrupt and prejudiced will to put it in a position to act aright. In order to do this it may be needful to have a divine law revealed, and this applied by a teaching and quickening Spirit from above.

II.

We are already in the heart of the subject of Sin, a topic which academic moralists studiously avoid, but which must be carefully looked at by those who would give a correct account of our moral constitution. In referring to it here, I do not profess to be able to give an explanation of the origin of sin under the government of God, whose power is almighty, and who shows that he hates sin. This seems to be a mystery which human reason cannot clear up. The topic certainly does not fall within the scope of our present investigation. I have here simply to consider sin in its reference to our moral convictions.

Sin is a quality of Voluntary acts. It always resides in some mental affection or act in which there is the exercise of free will. The guilt of the sin thus always lies with him who commits it. He cannot throw the blame on any other, for he has himself given his consent to it. Others may have seduced him into it, and in that case the criminality of having tempted him lies with them; and then the sin of having yielded to the temptation, and having done the wicked deed, lies with himself: he can devolve it on no other.

Our moral convictions declare that sin is of evil Desert, Condemnable, Punishable. This conviction is of precisely an opposite character to that which we entertain in regard to good affection and action. We declare the sin to have in itself evil desert; we condemn it in consequence, and we say of it, that it should be discouraged, nay, punished. The very ideas, so full of meaning, involved in these mental convictions, are native, original, and necessary. We cannot get them from mere sensations of pleasure or pain, nor from any intellectual opera