Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. HUMAN SIN. Section Fibst.—What Sra is, And The Sense Of Snr. Section Second.—Redemption From Sim. SECTION FIRST. What Sin is and the Sense of Sin—Essential Distinction—Burden of Universe—Radical Difficulty in Speculation—Unrest in all Earnest Souls — Consciousness of Sin—Its Development — Legitimate Result. DABKNESS is a simple negative—the absence of light, no more. In the moral region, that which answers to physical darkness is a dire positive, no mere negative, but reality, as monstrous as it is real. The radical difficulty in all speculation which ventures within the highest sphere of thought, is sin,—not weakness, not original imperfection, not misfortune, not accident, owing to some untoward, fortuitous combination of influences, but distinctly sin,—real essential evil, conscious, voluntary evil, resistance to what is known to be right, and choice of what is known to be wrong. Incarnation supposes human sin as its necessary ground. Except for this deadly, self-originated curse in the nature of man, no sacrifice, and above all, no such sacrifice, had been needed from theloving Father. There is one, only one, foul blot on God's universe, and this the Almighty has been at infinite pains to wipe out. Whatever creatures think of it, to their Creator sin must be reality, a dread reality. It means the disorganisation, the pollution, the ruin of created minds, the one fountain of misery and crime. " Everything in Christianity," says Miiller, " relates to the great contrast between sin and redemption, and it is impossible to understand the doctrine of redemption, which is the very essence of Christianity, until we have a thorough knowledge of sin. Christian theology here, if anywhere, wages war, pro aris et focis, with Deistical extenuations, and Pant...