H 00 CHAPTER VIII The Principle Six

CHAPTER VIII THE PRINCIPLE OF SIX. Our previous investigations have conducted us to the con clusion that sin is, as the Shorter Catechism defines it, " any transgression of or want of conformity to the law of God," and as such an act of rebellion against God. In ascertaining this, however, we have not ascertained all that it concerns us to investigate on this subject. There is a point beyond this which requires to be reached. For 1. As all man’s volitions spring from some predominant principle and tendency in his nature, the fact that in thought, word, and deed he trans gresses the divine law must have its source in some pre dominant principle within him. There must be some principium et fons whence these impure streams flow, and to which they are to be traced. And having ascertained the character of the stream, we are anxious to discover to what this is to be traced; just as if, on analysing the waters of a river, we found them marked by certain physical peculiarities, we should feel solicitous to discover whence these peculiarities arose. By a sort of psychological necessity, therefore, we are urged from investigating the nature and characteristic quality of sin to inquire into its principle and source in man’s nature.

Then, 2. In observing man’s conduct, we perceive that the acts which constitute his sins are not only multitudinous in point of number, but also extremely diversified in point of character. We find them differing in various aspects in respect of object, of character, of compass, and of kind; and yet all are classed under the head of sins, and legitimately so.

There must therefore be something in common to them all, some principle which pervades them all, something from which we can abstract everything also belonging to the act, and yet leave that by which it is constituted a sin. The mind is naturally urged to investigate this something; and we cannot say that our induction is at all complete until we have found it. 3. When we have laid down the position that "sin is the transgression of the law," we cannot long regard it without the question arising, Is it the mere transgression of the law, in and by itself, that constitutes the evil of sin? Assuming that it is as a transgression of law that sin is dealt with, and that it is under this aspect that we must contemplate it in relation to God’s dealings with sinners, both in reference to the punishment of sin and in reference to the remedial provision of the gospel; the question will still press upon us, What is it that makes this transgression of the law an evil, and causes it to be so abhorred of God?

Evidently there must be something in the inner nature of man, something that amounts to a severance of the bond between God and him, something that violates the relations that ought to exist between them, involved in the act of transgression which makes it so hateful to God. To Him in the infinitude of His being the mere act must be a matter of small moment, a simple turning to the right hand rather than the left on the part of one of His creatures, which in itself would be infinitely beneath His notice. It must be some thing involved in the act, some spiritual principle from which it springs, which, if we may so speak, by disturbing the relations between the Father of spirits and the soul of His creatures, grieves and offends Him. What that something is it obviously concerns us to discover if we can. As illustrative of these statements, and in part confirmatory of them, we may select the instance formerly cited, that, namely, furnished by the case of our first parents. The act by which they fell was the taking and eating of a particular fruit. This in itself was a purely indifferent act; there is no moral principle involved in the eating of one kind of fruit more than another, viewed simply in itself. This act became a sin, because it was the transgression of God’s precise injunction forbidding them to eat of the fruit of that tree. But that act on their part arose from, and was the index of, a particular state of mind; it was but the outcome and result of an internal working; and in this lay the real principle of their transgression the spirit, of which the act was the form and utterance. Further, it is only in this that we can see a point of community between their act as sin and the act (say) of their son Cain when he slew his brother. Both acts were sins, and yet in form and outward manifestation the two are wholly distinct. Wherein do they resemble each other? At what point do the two lines cross so as to give a point common to both, in virtue of which they are both in cluded under one head? To investigate this we are naturally prompted, arid the answer to it can be found only in our discovering the principle, common to all sin, from which the two sinful acts, so differing in all outward characteristics, sprang. In fine, Wherein lay the intrinsic evil of this act? What was there in it to make it so hateful in the sight of God? Granting that the rebelliousness of the sin and its enormity as a transgression of the law which God had enjoined demanded its punishment, it remains to ask, Whence arose the odiousness of it so that God, who cannot look on sin, abhorred and hated it with a perfect hatred? The proper answer to this will be found if we can dis cover the real principle of sin the inner operative cause of transgression. On this inquiry we now enter; and, as preparatory to it, there are two questions of a preliminary kind on which it may be desirable that we should bestow some attention, viz.

1. What is the psychological law of man’s acting? and 2. What is the vital principle of moral goodness or personal holi ness, the opposite of sin?