stands; but when it comes to knowing what he is in the sight of God, sin persuades him to reverse all right rules, and to go on as if health and wealth were his, while he is utterly bankrupt, and spiritually diseased from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. As the condemned soldier is blindfolded before the fatal volley of musketry is fired, so sin blindfolds the sinner before his execution, that he may have no warning and no chance to escape his doom. Often, very often, he dies as the fool dieth, thinking all is well, until he wakes up in the other world to the fearful realities of the Judgment. Three brief remarks conclude my theme. I. The subject teaches us that unconsciousness of our sins, instead of being a proof that our sin is small, proves the very opposite. If it be true that this unconsciousness is caused by our failure to make any real effort to resist the tide of sin within us, if our ignorance is due to the fact that God in mercy has set up some bars to its desolating progress, if the delay of his judgments has been perverted into an evidence that our sin was so slight that he will not punish it, if we have allowed our sin to blind us to our true condition, then surely our unconsciousness of our sins is no excuse for them, but rather an aggravation. We could not be unconscious of our sins if we had not been bound to follow our own reason and will in the very teeth of God's warnings. The criminal who pleads intoxication as an excuse for crime is answered by the judge: "Who made you intoxicated but yourself? Do not extenuate one crime by pleading another." An infidel writer of England shows what the instinct of human nature teaches on this point, when even he declares that "the greatest of sins is to be conscious of none," and every one of us will do well to consider whether the absence of any feeling of our sins is not evidence that we are great and hardened transgressors. Secondly, the very fact that a man does not feel his sins is not only proof that he is a great sinner in the sight of God, but this lack of feeling is the most alarming possible symptom. For there is no Christ and no salvation for such as he. Christ did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance; he came to seek and save only those that are lost. For one who continues unconscious of sin there is absolutely no Saviour and no heaven. The guilty and repentant may be saved, but such, never! Your own unconsciousness of sin does not alter for a moment the awful fact that you are a sinner, so great a sinner that the weight of your sin when laid upon the Son of God crushed his soul in Gethsemane, and broke his heart on Calvary. Nor does it alter for one moment the fearful certainty that if you do not accept this work of Christ in your stead, the weight of it will come down upon you and crush you at the Judgment. We sometimes wonder when we see men under strong conviction, overwhelmed with the sense of sin, unable to conceal their agony. When I have seen this restless anguish of the soul before which God was unrolling the long scroll of its transgressions, it has seemed to me that a full view of that scroll, with no Saviour's blood to blot out its accusations, must be death and torment-yes, eternal death and eternal torment! And yet the thought that we do not feel our sins sometimes seems to me more fearful still. More dreadful, if possible, than the strongest conviction of our sins is this deathlike unconsciousness of them; for that may indicate the working of the enlightening Spirit of God, while this may indicate that the Spirit of God has left the soul to go on in all its blindness and unconcern until the day of wrath shall tear away the mask of selfdeception, and the lightnings of God's justice shall destroy it suddenly and without remedy. Last of all, this subject teaches us as no other can, the immeasurable grace of God in the gift of his Holy Spirit. Infinitely needy and vile as we are, the worst feature of our case is that we do not realize our need and vileness; and not seeing it we will not make the first effort for our own salvation. Laden with a mountain-weight of guilt, tottering on the verge of everlasting fire, and yet insanely happy! What infinite love of God, that not only provides a free salvation through the cross and the blood of his only Son, but also reveals to the rejecters and mockers of that salvation their danger and their deliverance, through the enlightening, convincing, renewing power of his Holy Spirit! Have you ever availed yourself of the offer of that Spirit to reveal you to yourself? Have you ever gone to God pleading his promise to give the Holy Spirit to them who ask him? If you have not, then you are doubly guilty; first, for your criminal ignorance of your condition, and then for your neglect of that divine Agent, who alone can show you what you are. You bear the responsibility not only of your sin, but of refusing light with regard to your sin. And what excuse will you render in the great day when you give up your account to God? Excuse? You have no excuse, for you first deny God's testimony, and then cast out from your heart the only witness who can ever convince you. But I hear some sinner say: "I do have some faint knowledge-oh, how faint!-of my condition as a sinner!" O friend, cherish that conviction, banish it not! It is the Spirit's work-the only work which Satan cannot counterfeit. God has not left you yet. He shows you your need, only that he may point you to Christ. "Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world!" "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved!" The Spirit calls to-day, Yield to his power; XLIV 1 THE HELP OF THE SPIRIT IN PRAYER 1 Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. (Rom. 8:26, 27.) THE seventh chapter of Romans is the old story of the conflict between sinful human nature and divine grace; a conflict which begins with the moment of first conviction, and continues through the experience of conversion, to that point in the Christian life when there comes to the soul the glorious assurance of complete victory in Christ. The eighth chapter is the story of a long triumphant progress in the case of those with whom the divided life has ceased through conscious union with Christ and participation in his Spirit. As in the seventh chapter, we get a view of the earthward side of Christian character, so in the eighth, the heavenward side is described to us. The one presents religion in its relations to law; the other in its relations to the life-giving power of God; the one is full of the burden and sorrow of a struggling conscience and a will only half subdued, the other is full of the gratulations and rejoicings of the 1 A sermon preached in the First Baptist Church, Rochester, N. Y., January 4, 1874. |