ACS 
 
X X c. 
 
 CROALL LECTURES 
 1876 
 
 ’'JA 
 
 PRINCIPAL TULLOCH 
 
 ON THE 
 
 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 I. 
 
 HISTORY OF RATIONAL THEOLOGY 
 
 AND 
 
 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLAND 
 
 IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 Second Edition, 2 vols. 8vo, £1, 8s. 
 
 “The pleasure with which Principal Tulloch explores this comparatively unknown 
 field communicates itself to his readers, and the academic groves of Oxford and 
 Cambridge are invested with the freshness of a new glory.”— Edinburgh Review. 
 
 “ It is rich in pregnant and suggestive thought.”— Atheneeum. 
 
 “ Here we must take our respectful leave of this large-minded, lively, and thought¬ 
 ful work, which deserves to the full the acceptance it cannot fail to receive.”— 
 Saturday Review. 
 
 “ Every thoughtful and liberal Englishmen who reads these volumes will feel 
 that Principal Tulloch has laid him under obligations in writing them.”— Spectator. 
 
 “Ample scholarship, well-disciplined powers, catholic sympathies, and a mascu¬ 
 line eloquence, give it a high place among modem contributions to theological 
 science.”— British Quarterly Review. 
 
 “ From his lively portraits they will learn to know some of the finest spirits Eng¬ 
 land has produced ; while from his able and comprehensive summaries of the works 
 they left behind them, any reader of quick intelligence may acquaint himself with 
 their leading thoughts.”— Nonconformist. 
 
 II. 
 
 RELIGION AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 A SERMON FOR THE TIMES. 
 
 Preached in the Parish Church of Crathie, 5TH Sept. 1857. 
 
 Octavo, is. 
 
 “ One of the ablest discourses, we may say at once, which we have ever heard or 
 read.”— Spectator. 
 
 “This is a very admirable sermon—full of fine thought, and especially to be 
 valued for its clear and impressive statement of the truth that religion is something 
 which may be coloured by scientific knowledge and intellectual research, but which 
 may exist and powerfully operate wholly apart from these. ... We have sel¬ 
 dom read a sermon which gave us more pleasure, or one which suggested more of 
 sympathy with the religious conflict and difficulty of the day, and afforded more of 
 real counsel and aid.”— Nonconformist. 
 
 III. 
 
 THEISM: 
 
 THE WITNESS OF REASON AND NATURE TO AN ALL-WISE 
 AND BENEFICENT CREATOR. 
 
 Octavo, ios. 6d. 
 
 “ Dr Tulloch’s Essay, in its masterly statement of the real nature and difficulties 
 of the subject, its logical exactness in distinguishing the illustrative from the sug¬ 
 gestive, its lucid arrangement of the argument, its simplicity of expression, is quite 
 unequalled by any work we have seen on the subject .”—Christian Remembrancer. 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, Edinburgh and London. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 OF 
 
 S I N 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN TULLOCH, D.D. 
 
 PRINCIPAL OF ST MARY’S COLLEGE IN THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF ST ANDREWS J ONE OF HER MAJESTY’S 
 CHAPLAINS FOR SCOTLAND 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 MDCCCLXXVI 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2018 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/christiandoctrinOOtull 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 The Question of Sin in Relation to Modern 
 Schools of Thought. 
 
 The question Anthropological.. i 
 
 Is man a spiritual being or not 3 
 
 All Theology and higher Philosophy depend upon the answer, 6 
 
 Naturalistic theory of Evolution fails to explain man, . . 9 
 
 Moral life inexplicable on this theoiy, . .... 10 
 
 Religion of Moral Law, . . . . . . . 13 
 
 Unsatisfactory character of this Religion, . . . . 15 
 
 Metaphysic necessary to both Religion and Morality, . . 17 
 
 Method of treatment, ........ 20 
 
 Advantages of Historic method, ...... 23 
 
 True view of this method, ....... 25 
 
 Plan of the Lectures, ........ 27 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 Idea of Evil Outside of Revelation. 
 
 Question of Evil as old as humanity, 
 
 . . . 29 
 
 Answers to the question, 
 
 31 
 
 Comparative Theology, 
 
 32 
 
 Savage conception of Evil, 
 
 33 
 
 Religions of Egypt and Phoenicia, . 
 
 35 
 
 Vedic and Hellenic mythologies, . 
 
 37 
 
X 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Zoroastrianism, ......... 41 
 
 Manichseism, ......... 46 
 
 Brahmanic conception of Evil, ...... 48 
 
 Buddhism, .......... 5 2 
 
 Gnosticism, .......... 55 
 
 Conception of Evil in Greek Tragedy, ..... 5 ^ 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 Old Testament Doctrine of Sin. 
 
 Modem critical views of Old Testament, .... 60 
 
 Moral atmosphere pervading it, ... 63 
 
 The Fall,.66 
 
 Moral characteristics of Evil illustrated by it, . . . . 70 
 
 Expressions for Sin in Old Testament, ..... 78 
 
 Development of the Idea in the Old Testament, ... 86 
 
 Mosaism, .......... 88 
 
 Prophecy, .......... 90 
 
 Results of analysis, . . . . . . . . 95 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 Doctrine of Sin as in the Gospels. 
 
 Relation of Judaism and Christianity, ..... 98 
 
 Types of Christian Doctrine in New Testament, . . . 101 
 
 Doctrine of Satan in the Gospels, ...... 103 
 
 Our Lord’s deeper view of Sin, . . . . . .111 
 
 His idealisation of Law, . . . . . . .114 
 
 His higher Revelation of the Divine, . . . . .117 
 
 Sin intensified in these aspects, . . . . . .119 
 
 Essential nature of Sin, . . . . . . . .121 
 
 Sin as a natural' tendency, . . . . . . .124 
 
 Physical and Moral Evil, . . . . . . .125 
 
 Sin universal, . . . . . . . . .127 
 
 Man still divine in the midst of his sin, . . . . .131 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 XI 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 Doctrine of St Paul’s Epistles. , 
 
 St Paul’s mode of teaching different from the Gospels, . . 135 
 
 St Paul’s idea of Law, . . . . . . . .138 
 
 His doctrine of Sin in the light of this idea, .... 145 
 
 Gentiles and Jews alike sinners, . . . . . .146 
 
 Analysis of Sin in human nature, . . . . . .152 
 
 St Paul’s doctrine of the <r6.pl, . . . . . 1 55 
 
 Struggle depicted in Rom. vii., . . . . . 159 
 
 The effects of Sin, ........ 161 
 
 Meaning of “death,” ........ 164 
 
 Divine “wrath,”.167 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 Original Sin. 
 
 Original Sin a doctrine of St Paul, . . . . . .169 
 
 St Paul and Augustine, . . . . . . . .170 
 
 Advance beyond the doctrine of Experience, . . . .174 
 
 Hereditary corruption, . . . . . . . .177 
 
 St Paul’s view more than this, . . . . . .178 
 
 Rom. v. 12-21 ; 1 Cor. xv. 22, . . . . . .180 
 
 Typical character of Adam, . . . . . . .182 
 
 Spiritual unity of the race, . . . . . . .183 
 
 Special discussion of Rom. v. 12, . . . . . .184 
 
 The death of infants, . . . . . . . .189 
 
 Imputation of the “guilt of sin,” . . . . . . 191 
 
 Liberty and necessity, . . . . . . . .196 
 
 The future of Theology, . . . . . . .199 
 
 Conclusion, .......... 200 
 

 
 
 
 
THE CROALL LECTURES. 
 
 John Croall, Esq. of Southfield, being “deeply inter¬ 
 ested in the defence and maintenance of the doctrines.of 
 the Christian Religion, and desirous of increasing the reli¬ 
 gious literature of Scotland,” bequeathed in the hands of 
 Trustees the sum of ^5000 sterling “to found and estab¬ 
 lish a Lectureship, to be called ‘The Croall Lectureship.’” 
 The Trustees, according to Mr Croall’s settlement, are cer¬ 
 tain ministers in Edinburgh, the Professors of Divinity in 
 the University of Edinburgh, and the Moderator, Senior 
 Clerk, and Procurator of the Church of Scotland. The 
 Lecturers “shall be Licentiatesof the Presbyterian Churches 
 of Scotland” and occasionally a clergyman of any Reformed 
 Church other than Presbyterian, “ provided such appoint¬ 
 ment be made by at least two-thirds of the Trustees.” 
 The Lectures “ shall be delivered biennially in Edinburgh 
 during the winter session of the University of Edinburgh,” 
 “ shall be not less than six in number,” and shall be de¬ 
 voted to a consideration of the Evidences of Natural and 
 Revealed Religion and the Doctrines of the Christian 
 Religion. 
 

 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 I had intended to enlarge this volume so as 
 to embrace a special discussion of the Augus- 
 tinian and subsequent developments of the 
 Doctrine of Sin in the thought of the Church. 
 I wished also to treat of the bearing on this 
 doctrine of certain modern theories, from the 
 Optimism of Leibnitz to the Pessimism of 
 Schopenhauer and Hartmann. But the con¬ 
 sideration of these later aspects of the subject 
 must be deferred. It was deemed desirable 
 that the present Lectures should appear with¬ 
 out delay, and as much as possible in the form 
 in which they were delivered. The volume 
 answers to its title with sufficient distinctness ; 
 and although nothing new can be said on such 
 
VI 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 a subject, the method of treatment may be 
 found to have for readers something of the 
 same interest that it had for the numerous 
 hearers who attended the delivery of the 
 Lectures. 
 
 June i, 1876. 
 
t 
 
 THE 
 
 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 i. 
 
 THE QUESTION OF SIN IN RELATION TO 
 MODERN SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT- 
 METHOD OF TREATMENT. 
 
 The subject which I have undertaken to discuss in 
 these Lectures, if it cannot be said to lie at the 
 foundation of Christian Theology, is more or less 
 implied in the whole system of Christian doctrine. 
 In itself it belongs to what in modern nomenclature 
 is called Anthropology rather than Theology. It 
 is a question, that is to say, respecting Man rather 
 than God. But the Christian conception of God, 
 and of God’s action in the world, points throughout 
 to man as a sinner. All the characteristic terms of 
 Christian Theology—salvation, redemption, forgive- 
 
 A 
 
2 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 ness, grace—indicate that there is a power of evil 
 from which man needs to be saved, or which im¬ 
 pedes his higher life. There can be no more im¬ 
 portant inquiry, therefore, than one into the reality 
 and the meaning of this power of evil, which Chris¬ 
 tians call sin. 
 
 It is interesting to trace, both in Theology and 
 Philosophy, the interdependence of what may be 
 called Anthropological and Theological questions. 
 Man’s conception of himself, of his own nature, is 
 never separable from his higher conception of the 
 Divine. He is really, even when his thoughts seem 
 to wander furthest away or most aloft, the pivot 
 round which they turn. What he is himself, or is 
 supposed to be, gives the colour to all he thinks of 
 Nature around him, and God above him. There 
 never was a vainer effort than that so much vaunted 
 at present of casting aside anthropological ideas. 
 No more than man can strip himself of his nature 
 can he strip his thought of the folds in which that 
 nature enwraps it. There is a sense, and a right 
 sense, in which man’s thought of himself—what he 
 is—must mould all his other thought, philosophical 
 as well as theological. 
 
 In the history of the Church this has been exem¬ 
 plified over and over again. A shallow conception 
 of man’s nature has always bred a shallow concep¬ 
 tion of the Divine nature. A meagre anthropology 
 
SIN IN DELATION TO MODERN THOUGHT. 3 
 
 has for its counterpart a meagre theology. A Pela¬ 
 gian not merely denies the depth of human sin, but 
 the profundities of the Divine action. And the same 
 law of alternation or balance, if not always in the 
 same marked degree, runs everywhere through the 
 long line of the development of Christian thought. 
 
 But the antithesis is not less marked in Philo¬ 
 sophy. From the earliest dawn of speculation two 
 sides everywhere appear, contrasted by their start¬ 
 ing-point not less than by their results. It is the 
 conception of man as a being not only mundane, 
 but supra-mundane—as drawing his higher life from 
 a higher source—which has alone given rise to a 
 higher philosophy, or a Philosophy of Being. The 
 conception of man as merely a consensus of external 
 faculties has never risen above a philosophy of the 
 senses. Nor could it be otherwise. Thought can¬ 
 not, any more than water, rise higher than its source. 
 And the thought that is solely earth-born, or the in¬ 
 heritance of mundane experiences, and nothing more 
 —however subtilised or aspiring—can never bring any 
 light from beyond its earthly home. We must start 
 from a higher home, from a “ heaven lying about us 
 in our infancy,” if we would ever reach a spiritual 
 and higher line of thought at all. We cannot climb 
 into an empty heaven. If we are not born with the 
 “promise and potency” of the Divine, the “image 
 of God,” within us, then we shall never reach the 
 
4 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 Divine, earnestly as we may grope for it, and cast 
 forth our loftiest thoughts to grasp it. 
 
 The present turn of speculation once more strik¬ 
 ingly illustrates this interdependence of thought on 
 these great subjects. The favourite conceptions of 
 modern science involve, if they do not start from, a 
 definite view of human nature at variance with the 
 old Biblical or spiritual view. Man is conceived as de¬ 
 veloped from lower forms of life by lengthened pro¬ 
 cesses of natural selection. There is nothing neces¬ 
 sarily inconsistent with an enlightened Christianity in 
 this idea, so far. The Divine mind may work out its 
 plans by processes of growth or adaptation as read¬ 
 ily as by any other way. Nay, as it has been recently 
 admitted by one of the most distinguished advocates 
 of the modern idea, the teleological conception, or the 
 conception of design, is prominently suggested rather 
 than excluded by the theory of development as a 
 mere modus operandi. But beyond question the 
 chief advocates of this theory mean something very 
 different. Nature is supposed by them to be not 
 merely the sphere of operation, but the operating 
 power itself—beyond which there is nothing. Man 
 is not merely, like all other things, a natural growth, 
 but he is nothing else. There is no higher Divine 
 element in him. There is no such thing—or at least 
 nothing that we can know or validly infer. Ma¬ 
 terial facts and their relations or laws are all that we 
 
SIN IN RELATION TO MODERN THOUGHT. 
 
 can ever know. It is this underlying sense of the 
 theory which is at variance with the old Biblical 
 view of human nature. It leaves, for example, 
 no room for the idea of sin. For that which is 
 solely a growth of nature cannot contain anything 
 that is at variance with its own higher laws. It 
 may show more or less perfect stages of growth, 
 but it cannot contradict itself. If the individual 
 and social man alike are merely the outcome of 
 natural forces working endlessly forward towards 
 higher and more complex forms, then whatever man 
 is, he is not and cannot be a sinner. The mixed pro¬ 
 duct of internal and external forces—of what is called 
 organism and environment—he may be at certain 
 stages of his progress very defective. It may re¬ 
 quire thousands of years to elevate him into a more 
 complete existence. But he has not fallen below 
 any ideal he might have reached. He has not wil¬ 
 fully rejected a good he might have known. He is 
 only at any point what the sum of natural factors 
 which enter into his being have made him. The two 
 conceptions of sin and of development in this natu¬ 
 ralistic sense cannot coexist. I cannot be the mere 
 outcome of natural law, and yet accountable for the 
 fact that I am no better than I am. If I am only 
 the child of nature, I must be entitled to the privi¬ 
 leges of nature. If I have come from matter alone, 
 then I cannot dwell within the shadow of a respon- 
 
6 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 sibility whose birthplace is elsewhere—in a different 
 region altogether. And so the spirit of modern 
 science is consistently non-Christian. A man who 
 is nothing more than an aggregate of natural powers, 
 can have no true vision transcending the range of 
 these powers. The Unseen, or a law coming forth 
 from the Unseen to rule his spirit, must be a mere 
 superstition to him, and sin, as the violation of such 
 a law, a mere gloomy phantom, to be got rid of 
 the best way he can. 
 
 These considerations may serve to show the 
 importance of our subject, and how vitally it bears 
 on the problems of modern thought. All these 
 problems, and indeed the problems of thought in 
 all ages, have circulated around two main modes 
 of conceiving human nature—the one of which is 
 spiritual, Biblical, and theistic, and the other natural, 
 cosmical, and anti-theistic. These are the real anti¬ 
 theses which underlie all human speculation, and to 
 which it always returns. It cannot help returning 
 on the same line, after whatever show of discussion 
 and argument, because the line is already predeter¬ 
 mined by the starting-point. The conclusion on the 
 one side or the other is everywhere involved in the 
 original terms of the question. “ That which is born 
 of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the spirit 
 is spirit.” The Democritic philosopher, whether of 
 the ancient or a modern school, is already a mate- 
 
SIN IN RE LA TION TO MODERN THOUGHT. J 
 
 rialist—the Platonist already a Platonist—in the 
 very language with which they respectively open 
 their inquiries. All depends upon the presupposition 
 as to what man is with which they set out. 
 
 The anthropological question, therefore, is really 
 the primary question for all Philosophy, while the 
 very possibility of a Theology hangs upon the an¬ 
 swer given to it. If the answer be that of the 
 modern scientific school, then the theological idea, 
 or the idea of an extra-mundane sphere of which we 
 can have any knowledge, disappears altogether. If 
 nature round our life, and our processes of thought 
 and action are all built up from without—the result, 
 in their most subtle and lofty form, of material ap¬ 
 pliances—then anything beyond nature is imaginary. 
 There is no room for the thought of God, or a 
 sphere of divine action, or any element in us which 
 derives meaning from this sphere. Theological 
 dogmas vanish at a sweep, as a collection of mere 
 shadows with which men have amused or tormented 
 themselves. And this is clearly recognised by the 
 modern scientific school, as an end at which they 
 deliberately aim. Even earnest writers of this school 
 have professed a wish that men would at length turn 
 away from the contemplation of such shadows, and 
 devote themselves to real work for the improvement 
 of the world. What good might be done, they have 
 virtually said, if only the intellectual enthusiasm 
 
8 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 and ability which are now wasted on theological 
 questions were turned into the channel of scientific 
 labour, and applied to the investigation of the re¬ 
 alities of nature.* 
 
 But the theological spirit is irrepressible. It 
 rises from the very bosom of the school which dis¬ 
 owns it, and takes new and strange shapes in its 
 strange home. However man may prize science 
 and its results, apparently he cannot live on them. 
 There is that in him which demands something 
 more. There are powers within him which remain 
 restless and unsatisfied—conditions of morality and 
 social order which seem unable to stay themselves 
 save on eternal and divine laws.t The final answer to 
 such questions as have again been raised respecting 
 the very idea of religion must be sought in a re¬ 
 newed study of man’s whole nature. What really is 
 man in his complex activity ? Can he be explained 
 by reference to the mere laws of cosmical progress ? 
 Are the forces seen working endlessly in nature 
 below him adequate to account for all his life ? 
 Or are there not forces in him unaccountable on this 
 hypothesis, and which relate him to a higher sphere, 
 just as really as his senses and other natural organs 
 relate him to the lower sphere ? Is he, in short, an 
 animal, at the best, however noble an animal; and 
 
 * See Appendix I. 
 
 + M eyas iv tovtois 6 eds ovSe ytjpdirKei. —SOPH., O. T., 871. 
 
SIN IN RE LA TION TO MODERN THOUGHT. 
 
 9 
 
 are Mr Darwin and others in the true line of ex¬ 
 plaining not merely his physical but his emotional and 
 moral activities by reference to the nascent germs of 
 these in the lower animals ? Does the idea of gradual 
 development from below give the key not merely 
 to a part but to the whole of his nature, although 
 many links of the development are acknowledged to 
 be still obscure ? Or is there really a higher life in 
 man—forces of morality, aspiration, and devotion 
 which make him in creation a “singular effect”—the 
 image of a reasonable Power higher than his own, 
 who has made him, and to whom he is subject ? Is 
 mind, in short, prior to matter, and not its mere 
 evolution ? And is the higher life of man the ex¬ 
 pression of a Higher Mind that has endowed him 
 with intelligence, morality, and capacity of worship ? 
 
 It is impossible to get beyond this old antithesis 
 lying at the foundation of all thought, and it is 
 equally impossible to find a rational answer save in 
 the study of man himself. If the naturalistic hypo¬ 
 thesis can give an adequate account of man, then there 
 is an end to the question. But not even the most 
 extreme advocates of the hypothesis will venture to 
 assert that they have approached the solution of 
 man’s mental, and still less of his moral, being along 
 the line of lower life. Supposing that the fact of 
 life were given them—and this in its very lowest 
 forms they have failed to explain—they cannot con- 
 
10 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 fessedly find a passage from organic to conscious 
 existence. The thread of evolution snaps asunder 
 here. And even were they allowed to build on a 
 basis of consciousness, they are powerless to erect 
 thereon a moral structure. The moral life of 
 humanity baffles all attempts to construct it merely 
 from without. It is a kingdom within, unveiling 
 itself from a higher source—as much a reality as the 
 kingdom without, or the cosmos of natural law. 
 Both, as Kant says, are equally true—“ the starry 
 heavens above and the moral law within ; ” * the 
 former connecting itself with our external life, the 
 latter revealing a faculty of life independent of animal, 
 and even of all material existence. If there are times 
 when we feel that the spiritual side of humanity has 
 been somewhat exaggerated as an independent 
 sphere, and an absolutism attributed to it which 
 experience hardly warrants, there are other times 
 when the whole strength of experience rises up 
 against the most ingenious explanations of a psycho¬ 
 logical naturalism, and a sense of duty to a higher 
 Power makes itself felt irresistibly. The heaven 
 above is not more clear than the heaven of duty within. 
 If we had to choose betwixt the two realities, the 
 latter is the more intense and overpowering of the 
 two. 
 
 * Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, quoted by Sir W. Hamilton in 
 his Lectures on Metaphysics, p. 39, 40. See passage in Appendix II. 
 
SIN IN DELATION TO MODERN THOUGHT. II 
 
 But this may be admitted, and yet the Biblical 
 idea be rejected. There are schools of thought 
 in our time which emphasise the moral side of 
 humanity, and yet reject the old religious back¬ 
 ground whence man as a moral intelligence was 
 supposed to have come. They advocate strenu¬ 
 ously a moral and even a religious nature in man, 
 and go so far as to believe that human happiness can 
 only be found in conformity to a religious ideal. 
 But then they either deny the objectivity of this ideal 
 altogether, or at least deny its old Biblical character 
 as centring in a Divine Person or an Intelligent and 
 Holy Will ruling man and the world. Experience, it 
 is allowed, gives the data of a higher life in man, just 
 as surely as the data of a lower life. But then the 
 higher life is either without any sphere beyond the 
 visible and natural sphere which now encloses it, or 
 the sphere which is above it and to which it answers 
 is a mere dumb power or “stream of tendency,” of 
 which we can know nothing save that it is and 
 that it acts. In this view morality is allowed, and 
 religion is allowed and even warmly advocated. But 
 neither the morality nor the religion are of the old 
 Biblical type. They not only start with man, but 
 they stay with man. The expression “ God ” may 
 be used, but its meaning is entirely inverted. It 
 no longer means a living Person outside of us,—an 
 Intelligence to whom our intelligences can ascend 
 
12 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 and with whom they can communicate. It is mere¬ 
 ly an idealised abstraction of ourselves, or some 
 impersonal Power and Law “ not ourselves.” In 
 either case, and on every such hypothesis of making 
 experience not merely the starting-point but the 
 goal of religious thought, we can never pass into a 
 higher or supernatural sphere of intelligence. To 
 attempt this is to attempt Metaphysic; and all our 
 modern schools of experience, whether they start 
 from external nature and the generalisation of cos- 
 mical phenomena, or from man and the phenomena 
 of moral conduct and aspiration, detest and dis¬ 
 avow Metaphysic. 
 
 Nature and the facts of nature are tangible and 
 powerful realities, say one class of our modern ex¬ 
 perience-philosophers—make what you can of them. 
 If science and the laws which it unfolds are in them¬ 
 selves cold and uninspiring, clothe them with the 
 ideas of sentiment and order. In other words, make 
 them religion. It is contended by the special school 
 of Positivists or the true Comtists that science must 
 become religion, and it is their aim to preach as 
 missionaries this new religion of scientific doctrine 
 and scientific order. But to pass beyond the bounds 
 of scientific generalisation is to pass into a region 
 of nonsense. There is nothing, or at least nothing 
 that we can ever know, beyond this region. 
 
 Others, again, virtually say, leave nature alone. 
 
SIN IN RELATION TO MODERN THOUGHT. 13 
 
 It is the proper sphere of science, and a religion of 
 science is hopeless. But look within, and there a new 
 order of facts emerges as the true basis of religion. We 
 know that to be good is better than to be bad ; that 
 righteousness is happiness: that in our life, in short, 
 there is a moral order of whose existence we cannot 
 doubt, any more than we can doubt of the exist¬ 
 ence of the outward cosmical order. Belief in the 
 reality of this moral order is the essence of religion. 
 The position seems Christian. It is put forth as the 
 last or most modern expression of Christianity.* 
 But it breaks down at the most vital point. For 
 beyond the subjective sphere of moral experience it 
 recognises nothing. To step beyond the moral 
 order verifiable in our experience, to a Supernal order 
 with a Supreme Intelligence at its head—this is 
 no longer religion but theological Metaphysic, a 
 mere region of chaos and wordy darkness in which 
 we can verify nothing. 
 
 In neither of these cases is religion denied to man. 
 On the contrary, the fullest concessions are made to 
 it, and the line of experience is run out to its end, 
 and possibly beyond its end. But in both alike all 
 spiritual inference from the facts of experience is 
 
 * Dr Matthew Arnold’s position is so well known by his recent 
 works that it is unnecessary to do more than refer to it. But the 
 same position is virtually held by the influential school of divines, 
 known as the “modem school,” in Holland. See in Appendix III. 
 an interesting statement of their position. 
 
14 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 denied. Neither the cosmical order nor the moral 
 order are held as witnessing to a Supreme Order, from 
 which both come, and of which both are only the re¬ 
 flection. God (in the Biblical sense) is not only not 
 the first word of these schools,—He is not their last. 
 They not only do not take their authority from Him, 
 —they do not lead up to Him ; He is not in all 
 their thoughts. At the best and at the last there is 
 only a glorified humanity, or “ a power not ourselves 
 making for righteousness.” The measure of human 
 experience is not only the measure of knowledge, 
 but of being. Anthropology has not only taken 
 precedence of Theology, but taken revenge upon it 
 for its long neglect by extinguishing it. If a reli¬ 
 gion can be made out of man, and the facts that are 
 verifiable in his experience,—good and well. But 
 beyond the borders of this experience, to a single 
 step of inference, or what they call inference, both 
 the religions of science and of culture obstinately re¬ 
 fuse to go. 
 
 But here again the question recurs, Do these 
 anthropological religions (much as they repudiate 
 Anthropomorphism, they are anthropological and 
 nothing else) rightly interpret human nature, or 
 give a true account of it ? Is it possible, from a 
 study of man himself, to rest satisfied either with 
 a religion of cosmical law or of moral law ? Are 
 not those very facts of experience, of which so much 
 
SIN IN RELATION TO MODERN THOUGHT. 15 
 
 is made, only intelligible in the light of a higher 
 Supreme Law ? Is all ethic not necessarily theologic, 
 and do not the very ideas of right and wrong dis¬ 
 appear apart from an Order which is not merely 
 within man, but without him—a Supreme and Holy 
 Will, from which all cosmical and moral activity 
 alike flow, and to which they obediently return ? Is 
 not the moral life of humanity only conceivable as a 
 reflected life, looking back towards this higher Source, 
 and gathering all its true strength therefrom—a 
 Source which has lifted it upwards through the ages, 
 and drawn it always more near to its own Ideal ? 
 Is not humanity itself only intelligible as a created 
 and not as a self-evolved personality; as a subject 
 of education, and not of mere development; as the 
 child of a Divine Father, and not the victim of a 
 power not himself which punishes his unrighteous¬ 
 ness ? Is not the very conception of righteousness 
 only reached by a moral sense or conscience in us, 
 which, if it is allowed at all, witnesses to far more 
 than a mere stream of tendency encompassing and 
 controlling our lives ? 
 
 In the course of these Lectures the views here 
 indicated are everywhere implied. It was neces¬ 
 sary, therefore, to make them so far clear at the 
 outset. Our argument rests, and can only rest, 
 both on a moral and a theistic basis. The ques¬ 
 tion of sin is a question which has no existence 
 
16 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 save in the moral sphere. In the region of cosmical 
 law it does not emerge at all. Whatever there may 
 be of the appearance of evil within this sphere 
 is either capable of explanation on an enlarged 
 scientific view, or draws its character of mystery from 
 the higher moral sphere which it touches. Apart 
 from a moral law, enclosing all sentient life, and re¬ 
 vealing itself as an intelligible and imperative guide 
 in human life, there cannot even be the imagination 
 of moral transgression. The most rudimentary con¬ 
 ception of what is called sin vanishes. The fact of 
 morality, therefore, and of a moral ideal, must be 
 taken along with us from the outset. 
 
 But the fact of a metaphysical or theological sphere 
 must no less be presumed. At the root, Metaphysic 
 and Theology are one, and rest on the same basis ; 
 nay, Morality, in any true sense, appears to us to 
 rest on no other basis. Otherwise it is only a gener¬ 
 alisation of utilities without any permanent essence 
 or unity. In man there is either a principle of life 
 deeper than all nature ( physis )—in other words, 
 a metaphysical principle—or there is not. He is 
 primarily either spiritual or material—a divinely- 
 created soul, or a subtly-composed combination of 
 mere physical elements, enclosing whatever variety 
 of so - called spiritual experiences. There is no 
 evading this final issue. The spiritual side of 
 humanity, which in name is not denied by any 
 
SIN IN DELATION TO MODERN THOUGHT. 17 
 
 school of thought with which it is necessary to argue, 
 is either real in the old scholastic sense, or merely 
 nominal —a growth from a divine root, transcending 
 nature, and related to a Higher Spirit, which has im¬ 
 planted it; or it is a mere growth of nature, mar¬ 
 vellously as it may have subtilised and purified the 
 lower elements out of which it has grown. The 
 latter alternative is that which is really assumed by 
 all our modern schools, although less prominently 
 by some than others. This is the meaning of their 
 incessant assault and abuse of Metaphysic ; of their 
 equally incessant admiration and applause of experi¬ 
 ence. All the phases of mind and feeling, spiritual 
 as well as sensible, are allowed for. These phases are 
 facts to be woven into science and religion. But a 
 metaphysical or spiritual ground in human nature— 
 an ens metaphysicum and soul—as a separate reality, 
 with a separate and transcendent sphere of its own, 
 is presumed to be mere superstition or delusion. 
 The sphere of being is here and now—nowhere 
 else. Soul is the finest experience ripened within 
 this sphere; it is nothing else. 
 
 But Metaphysic cannot be got rid of by mere 
 assertion. The highest thought of every age has 
 returned to a metaphysical basis, and found the 
 only solution of its problems in the recognition 
 of a sphere other than the present, and deeper 
 than all phases of experience. Behind the phen- 
 
 B 
 
1 8 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 omenal, in all its manifestations, it has found the 
 noumenal —behind all the flow of experience, a 
 unity of Divine Reason or Soul or Spirit in man, 
 out of which alone have come the ‘ flower and fruit ’ 
 of his higher life. It is of the essence of this higher 
 life, not only that it is independent of matter, or 
 springs from a source independent of matter, but 
 that it is related to a world of spiritual or meta¬ 
 physical reality—a supernatural order which every¬ 
 where touches it and conditions it. This supernat¬ 
 ural order is no mere ideal rule or law—a pro¬ 
 jection of our higher imagination or an invasion 
 of “ something not ourselves,” whence we can¬ 
 not tell. It is a divine reality, — a Personal 
 Reason and Will like our own, enlightening, edu¬ 
 cating, controlling us. Morality, in the true sense, 
 is conformity to this divine reality ; Philosophy, in 
 the highest sense, is our theory of its mode of 
 being ; and Theology, our knowledge of its activities 
 or manifestations. Alike they presuppose a trans¬ 
 cendent or metaphysical basis. Let this basis be 
 granted, all the rest follows. Let man himself be 
 Divine in his essential being, the theistic infer¬ 
 ence is a strict and legitimate one. Let this be 
 denied, Theism disappears. The very idea of the 
 Divine in the old, and, as we must hold, the only 
 true sense, can never be reached. 
 
 Large, therefore, as may seem our assumptions to 
 
SIN IN RELATION TO MODERN THOUGHT. 19 
 
 begin with, they all hang together. They come very 
 much to the old Biblical truth that man is a created 
 being, and not a mere result of natural development, 
 —that he was made in the image of God, endowed 
 with a reasonable will and conscience, and subject 
 to the authority of the Divine Being who made him. 
 The time was when it might have been a mere 
 matter of course to start with such assumptions in 
 treating any theological topic; but in the present 
 atmosphere of opinion it is hardly possible to do 
 this without at least indicating what we are doing, 
 and, so to speak, clearing our path towards the 
 special question which is to occupy us. It is only 
 when we have planted ourselves on a spiritual or 
 metaphysical basis, below all mere phases of ex¬ 
 perience, and brought ourselves face to face with 
 Soul on the one hand and God on the other, sub¬ 
 ject and object alike transcending mere natural 
 development, that our question comes into view at 
 all. We cannot help, therefore, beginning on this 
 basis, and implying it from the first. At the same 
 time, we hope in the course of our exposition to do 
 something to vindicate the soundness of such a basis. 
 It will be found better than any other to harmonise 
 with the results of our analysis of the profound 
 enigma of sin. The enigma may remain insoluble; 
 but if it be at all, it must cast some meaning on 
 the true character of humanity. If man be a sinner, 
 
20 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 the fact of sin , however inscrutable it may remain 
 in its own character, cannot fail to authenticate 
 his spiritual origin and relationship, and thus throw 
 back lines of proof in favour of the theistic con¬ 
 clusion with which we have started. This is not 
 to reason in a circle, but only to bring back such 
 truths as may be gathered in the recesses of our 
 moral experience to light up the pathway along 
 which we have travelled. 
 
 Having so far premised as to the character of the 
 question before us in relation to modern schools of 
 opinion, it still remains to consider as to our method 
 of discussion. Sin being held to be a fact of human 
 nature—an element of our moral consciousness—it 
 might be thought best to begin with this conscious¬ 
 ness, and to endeavour to fix the fact in the light of 
 an internal analysis of its contents. If it be there, 
 these contents must reveal it; and so we believe they 
 do beyond doubt. Step by step the fact may be 
 unfolded by an honest and searching scrutiny of the 
 individual moral experience. 
 
 This is the method of analysis which is mainly 
 followed by J. Muller in his great work on the 
 Christian Doctrine of Sin, and it long appeared to us 
 the true method of dealing with the subject,—first, 
 to examine the individual consciousness in its inner 
 witness to the fact—to draw out the features of 
 
SIN IN RE LA T10N TO MODERN THOUGHT. 21 
 
 this self-witness ; and then to view the conclu¬ 
 sions thus reached in the light of Scripture, espe¬ 
 cially of the significant statements on the subject 
 in the apostolic writings. But this method no 
 longer appears so satisfactory as it once did. It 
 assumes too readily the fixity of the moral and 
 religious consciousness in every individual. It makes 
 this consciousness as it exists now, or in modern 
 Christian nations, a standard of universal applica¬ 
 tion. It assumes, moreover, that it is possible in 
 some way to distinguish betwixt our natural and our 
 inherited moral notions — our moral consciousness 
 merely as human beings, and the same consciousness 
 as informed and instructed by Divine Revelation. In 
 the first instance, we are supposed to be dealing with 
 the light of Nature, as if we were able to fix its ele¬ 
 ments apart by themselves, before we begin to con¬ 
 template them in the light of Scripture. But this is 
 really an impossible task. The contents of Nature and 
 Revelation cannot any longer be separated in this 
 manner. The historic and the individual conscience 
 are inextricably interwoven as cause and effect. 
 We are all of us morally as well as intellectually 
 what we are, not merely because of certain specific 
 and typical endowments, but because of a long line 
 of inherited experiences which have come to us from 
 all past sources of culture, natural and revealed. 
 We are born of Christian parents, and nursed from 
 
22 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 the first in Christian ideas, which have entered into 
 the sources of our moral being, and given it both 
 colour and substance. We cannot any longer dis¬ 
 criminate in this being the specific from the general, 
 the individual from the catholic compounds. What 
 is ultimate in our higher thought can never be dis¬ 
 entangled from our inheritance of belief and educa¬ 
 tion. There is no doubt a certain morality and a 
 certain religion in all men by nature. The history 
 of ethics and the history of religion alike show this. 
 If we go outside of Christianity, we still find man 
 a creature of morality, or a subject of religion. 
 This is enough to show that moral and religious 
 instincts are a natural part of humanity. But, 
 admitting this, it is no longer possible for those 
 who have been educated within the long-descended 
 line of Christian ideas, to determine clearly the 
 elements either of a natural Ethic or a natural 
 Religion as distinct from those ideas. They cleave 
 to us too closely. Nay, they are so inwoven in the 
 common fibre of our intellectual and spiritual life, 
 that many of those who in our day assail Christian¬ 
 ity with most intelligence and force, are found bor¬ 
 rowing the very ideas with which they would sup¬ 
 plant the Gospel from the atmosphere of morality 
 which it has produced, and which without it would 
 soon vanish. To this extent the modern idea of 
 continuity must be admitted by all. The moral and 
 
SIN IN RELATION TO MODERN THOUGHT. 2 3 
 
 religious life of humanity is a vast growth, which 
 has taken up into its life-blood all sources of past 
 knowledge from Church and Scripture, as well as 
 from Nature and Science. The light of so-called 
 Nature and the light of Revelation have so mingled 
 their rays in us, as to make up a blended experience 
 which it is no longer possible to break up and refer 
 to their respective sources. 
 
 It will be our aim, therefore, instead of beginning 
 with the full idea of sin and appealing to Scripture 
 everywhere for its proof, to review the idea in its 
 gradual development. The idea is, according to our 
 belief, a true one. It is verified by experience, recog¬ 
 nised, described, and defined in Scripture. But, like 
 all other ideas, it has grown from stage to stage in 
 the human consciousness. It is not at first what it 
 is afterwards—in its beginnings what it is in its full 
 expression. It is now generally recognised that an 
 idea is best understood and interpreted when thus un¬ 
 folded along the whole line of its history—nay, that 
 the best verification of the idea, or proof of its being 
 true and not false, is just the manner in which it 
 is seen from the beginning to cleave to the human 
 mind and heart as a living possession. 
 
 Into this growth of religious ideas there enter all 
 the factors which have been concerned in their pro¬ 
 duction, expansion, or purification — not only the 
 natural impulses of the human mind pushing on- 
 
24 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 wards and realising more clearly its own powers, 
 but also what is meant by Revelation, or the special 
 introduction of new thoughts and impulses from a 
 higher source. Without Revelation, religious ideas 
 would never have been what they are. Hebrew and 
 Christian monotheism, the great doctrines of the 
 Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the doctrine 
 of Sin in its full meaning, and Justification by grace, 
 are all, according to Christian belief, the result of this 
 higher communication. According to the same belief, 
 they are true as thus communicated. But the higher 
 source from which such ideas come does not destroy 
 their capacity of growth. On the contrary, of all ideas 
 the most living and fertile have been those of Revela¬ 
 tion. They have been as a new power of life to the 
 human consciousness, darkly growing up from the 
 tangled weeds of its own superstitions to the clear light 
 of God revealed in Christ. None of them were revealed 
 in their fulness all at once. No doctrine has come 
 forth in complete lineaments from the Divine mind. 
 It has aggregated and acquired precision of outline 
 from many influences working in the mind and heart 
 of the Church in all ages. Theology exists for the 
 purpose of analysing the aggregate, and elucidating 
 and verifying the details of outline, and, in short, 
 of presenting the doctrine in its full contents and 
 meaning. 
 
 There is nothing novel in this view of Theology, 
 
SIN IN RE LA TION TO MODERN THOUGHT. 25 
 
 I have not said there is. It has always been the 
 business of Christian Theology to verify doctrine 
 in the light of Scripture, and to trace how the 
 various facts or texts of Scripture contribute to 
 form the doctrine. But there is this difference be¬ 
 twixt the more recent and the older dogmatic 
 method, that the modern theologian does not con¬ 
 sider doctrines to be formed by a mere analysis 
 and co-ordination of texts. They are not only 
 logical deductions from Scriptural data; they are 
 vital growths within the Christian consciousness. So 
 the business of the theologian is not only to deduce 
 conclusions from Scriptural premises, but to trace 
 the vital links in the organism of Christian thought. 
 He feels, moreover, the necessity of doing this in a 
 true historic spirit; unfolding the doctrine from its 
 first germ to its full outline; reading forward from 
 the beginning, and not reading backward from the 
 end, as has been so often done. This is what is 
 meant by the historic method : not the discussion 
 or estimate of past opinions, but the analysis from 
 the first of a doctrine in its vital growth in the 
 human consciousness. The modern theologian de¬ 
 sires to look at the genesis of Christian ideas as 
 far as possible in their own light; to see them as 
 they grow, and not merely to handle them as past 
 logical forms. He may fail in this. Misconceptions 
 will cling to him in spite of himself; and he will 
 
2 6 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 look at the past in the light of the present, and 
 judge it thereby. But at any rate he has breathed 
 the new historic atmosphere which surrounds the 
 modern intelligence, and he feels that the end is not 
 as the beginning in doctrine any more than in any¬ 
 thing else ; that there is a continuous movement 
 all along the line of its development; and that his 
 proper business is not to carry back the fulness of 
 the result to measure the first springs of the move¬ 
 ment, but to study these springs as they rise in their 
 first freshness, and to trace,with unforced and discrim¬ 
 inating intelligence, their gradual advance till they 
 swell into the full dogmatic utterance of the Church. 
 
 A confusion of the spheres of what have hitherto 
 been called Nature and Revelation* may seem to 
 follow from this view. We have already spoken 
 of the difficulty of discriminating these spheres in 
 our own experience; and the extreme schools of 
 religious opinion, both in this country and in Holland 
 and Germany, willingly confuse them, and recog¬ 
 nise nothing essentially distinctive in what we call 
 Revelation. Yet there is nothing in the concep¬ 
 tion itself, or the method which has grown out of it, 
 that necessitates this confusion. Both factors—the 
 natural and supernatural, the human and the divine 
 —are alike present in the formation of all religious 
 thought. It may be impossible always to distinguish 
 them ; it is to us certainly impossible, at this stage 
 
 * See Appendix IV. ' 
 
SIN IN RELATION TO MODERN THOUGHT. 2J 
 
 of religious progress, to discriminate the elements 
 either of a natural Ethic or a natural Religion separ¬ 
 able from the course of Christian ideas, and self¬ 
 authenticating on a basis of its own. The historic 
 method has destroyed these presumptions of a for¬ 
 mer Deism, which tried vainly to stand aloof from 
 the course of Christian intelligence. But, in doing 
 so, it is so far from having destroyed the claims of 
 Nature on the one hand, or Revelation on the other, 
 that it has carried them up into a living unity of 
 Christian Reason, or of Reason informed and enlight¬ 
 ened by all the influences, higher and lower, divine 
 and natural, which have nurtured and fashioned it 
 from the beginning. 
 
 I shall endeavour, therefore, in these Lectures, to 
 treat first the growth of the idea of evil, in its most 
 general aspect, as it meets us in those forms of 
 religious culture which preceded or were entirely 
 outside of that divine education of the Hebrew race 
 under which the special consciousness of sin was 
 developed. This will bring before us the only purely 
 “natural” notions on the subject—the workings of 
 the human mind and feeling regarding it, untouched 
 by any special revelation. 
 
 I shall then pass to consider the idea of evil as 
 apprehended by the Hebrew mind, or the rise and 
 progress in that mind of the idea of sin, under the 
 special divine training to which it was subjected. 
 I shall treat, in other words, of the Old Testament 
 
28 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 doctrine of sin, which is absolutely necessary to the 
 understanding of the developed doctrine in the New 
 Testament. 
 
 This fully developed doctrine will next engage 
 us under the several significant aspects in which 
 it took hold of the primitive Christian conscious¬ 
 ness as represented in the New Testament Scrip¬ 
 tures, especially as depicted in the Gospels and the 
 Epistles of St Paul. The doctrine of original sin, 
 as the final expression of the Christian consciousness 
 in the apostolic or first Christian age, will finally 
 occupy us and close our present exposition. 
 
 There are endless collateral controversies as to 
 moral freedom, the nature and extent of the moral 
 law, the relation of sin in its origin to the human 
 and divine will, set forth in various theories. But 
 I shall endeavour to keep as close to the subject 
 as I can. There is little good in following the 
 inquiry into regions which transcend all experience 
 and all means of reaching a verifiable conclusion, or 
 in beating out the straw of old controversies which 
 have lost all or most of their meaning. It is un¬ 
 necessary to entangle ourselves with the thoughts of 
 others, save where they bear directly upon our line 
 of exposition. The subject, as thus sketched, is 
 ample and interesting enough in itself to occupy our 
 whole space. 
 
IDEA OF EVIL OUTSIDE OF REVELATION. 29 
 
 r 
 
 II. 
 
 IDEA OF EVIL OUTSIDE OF REVELATION. 
 
 The question of evil is as old as humanity itself. 
 It enters into all forms of religion. It is the back¬ 
 ground of mystery in all human life ; and its shadow 
 falls over that outward world of cosmical law which 
 seems most removed from it. 
 
 Amidst the pervading harmonies of creation there 
 are forces ready to break forth with destructive 
 activity, and to spread around ruin and disaster. 
 Nature is powerful for harm as well as for help, a 
 storehouse of death as well as of life.* Darkness and 
 storm alternate with light and serenity; the peaceful 
 courses of the seasons are interrupted by the incal¬ 
 culable fury of the tempest; and even the security 
 of the abiding earth and heavens seems invaded by 
 the explosions of the earthquake and the ominous 
 gloom of the eclipse. These phenomena may be 
 all equally ordered, but they powerfully excite the 
 suggestion of evil in the human imagination. In 
 > * See Appendix V. 
 
3 o 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 primitive times they touch it with a peculiarly vivid 
 force of apprehension and dread ; and even after the 
 light of science has searched the secrecies of Nature, 
 and laid bare its wondrous order everywhere, there 
 lingers in the popular mind a deep distrust of all 
 unwonted phenomena. 
 
 In the region of sensitive life the idea of evil pre¬ 
 sents itself directly. Here it is that Nature is “ red 
 in tooth and claw,”* and its very arrangements 
 seem designed not merely to produce good, but to 
 inflict evil. The whole range of animal existence 
 presents a mingled scene of enjoyment and suffering 
 —a scene bright with the activities of life, and health, 
 and triumph, but also dark with the endurance of 
 weakness, terror, and violence, the latter apparently 
 entering into the constitution of the animal world 
 as immediately as the other. 
 
 And when we turn to the highest form of life in 
 man himself, the presence of evil haunts it every¬ 
 where in endless forms of general and individual 
 experience in all relations of human society, all 
 functions of human industry, and in the noblest 
 energies of human progress. We cannot conceal its 
 working when we look within our own hearts. Nay, 
 here more than anywhere it shows its deepest power, 
 and touches human experience with acutest misery. 
 Different natures will apprehend differently the 
 * In Memoriam, LVI. 
 
IDEA OF EVIL OUTSIDE OF REVELATION. 31 
 
 depth and power of evil in human life ; but there 
 are none, not even the most sentimental enthusiasts, 
 can disputeVits existence; and it requires only a 
 slight degree of moral earnestness to be solemnly 
 arrested by it. The highest natures have been 
 most moved by its mystery ; and those who have 
 most realised the greatness of man, and done most 
 for his good, have at the same time felt most pathet¬ 
 ically the shadows of evil that rest upon his lot. 
 
 So far there can hardly be any difference of opin¬ 
 ion as to the fact which we call evil. Whatever men 
 may make of the fact, its presence around them, 
 and in their own life, admits of no denial. 
 
 A fact so universal and so painful, touching 
 human life at all points with such a sore pressure, 
 has been necessarily a subject of much inquiry and 
 reflection. Men have never ceased interrogating 
 the mystery which lies around them and within 
 them. The history of religion is in great part a 
 history of the explanations which men have tried 
 to give of it. It is the business of these Lectures 
 to deal with one of these explanations. The Chris¬ 
 tian answer to the question of evil, apart from all 
 considerations of its essential importance, is one 
 which can never cease to interest all thoughtful 
 minds. It is at least one of the most intelligible 
 and consistent that has been given. But, before 
 entering upon our special task, it will be well to 
 
32 
 
 THE CHE/ST/AH DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 bring under brief review such answers as have oc¬ 
 curred to the human mind in its successive stages 
 of religious progress. The course of religious 
 thought outside the Jewish and the Christian Reve¬ 
 lation may, or may not, be the product of purely 
 natural reflection. Elements of primeval tradition 
 may mingle in it; but, at least, it is the only source 
 whence we can gather the contents of Natural Re¬ 
 ligion in any intelligible sense of these words. 
 
 It is needless to say that we make no attempt to 
 handle this part of our task with historical complete¬ 
 ness. Any such attempt would lead us far into the 
 wide field of comparative Theology* No field of 
 inquiry can be more interesting; but it is beyond 
 our present scope, as it is beyond our knowledge. 
 All that we propose to do is to trace rapidly the 
 chief ideas of evil that meet us in the great world 
 of religious thought—unrepresented by the Jewish 
 or Christian Scriptures. Such a sketch, however 
 rapid, if at all intelligent, can hardly fail to throw 
 a reflected light on the Christian doctrine, and to 
 bring into bolder and more precise relief its distin¬ 
 guishing features. In point of fact it will be found 
 that the answers which have been given to the prob¬ 
 lems of evil outside of revelation run in a few main 
 lines, which continually repeat themselves, and which 
 
 * See Appendix VI. 
 
IDEA OF EVIL OUTSIDE OF REVELATION. 33 
 
 seem to exhaust all the efforts of human speculation 
 on the subject 
 
 Glancing, then, at the world of religious thought 
 outside of Christianity and its anticipatory revela¬ 
 tion, we may be said to meet with the following 
 successive developments of the idea of evil—some 
 of them of the nature of reasoned or speculative 
 solutions, others in the main unconscious generalisa¬ 
 tions which have dominated human intelligence, 
 without professing to unravel the mystery which it 
 faces. 
 
 1. The rudest conception of evil is that which 
 meets us in prehistoric and savage religions.* It is 
 the instinct of the savage to conceive of the external 
 world as upon the whole evil rather than good. No 
 intelligence can be said to mingle with this instinct 
 or to guide it. It is only a crude confused sense in 
 the mind of the savage of the pressure of natural 
 forces upon his security, comfort, or possessions. 
 What is evil, and still less what is good, in any deeper 
 sense, he never asks himself. He is incapable of 
 even forming coherent imaginations of the one or the 
 other ; but instinctively he trembles before a Power 
 or Powers which can hurt him, blight the fruits of 
 his labour or destroy his cattle, deny him success in 
 the chase and triumph in war; and he offers rites 
 or uses spells or incantations to drive away these 
 
 * See Appendix VII. 
 
 C 
 
34 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 Powers, or draw them to his side. The evil is there¬ 
 fore truly far more of a god to him than the good, 
 and devil-worship, however revolting and unintellig¬ 
 ible to a later reflectiveness, is only a natural infer¬ 
 ence of the savage view of life and of Nature. So 
 radical is the hold which evil in some form or an¬ 
 other has over the human heart and imagination. 
 
 2. As we pass to the earliest forms of historical 
 religion, a higher and better view of Nature meets 
 us. It is still full of evil, but it is also full of good. 
 Its great contrasts of light and shade, of beauty 
 and terror, are reproduced and personified. The 
 external world continues to dominate the religious 
 imagination ; but this world is no longer a mere 
 repertory of evil powers ready to crush man or 
 destroy the fruits of his labour. It is a scene of 
 incessant activity, productiveness, and life. The 
 clear sky above, the radiant sunlight, the sweet 
 wind no less than the destructive blast, fire, water, 
 earth, all that is joyful as well as all that is gloomy 
 in the great picture of the outward world, are ideal¬ 
 ised and clothed in imaginary forms. There may 
 be no depth of intelligence, no clear lines drawn 
 even betwixt natural qualities ; yet the one side 
 of the picture is given as well as the other. The 
 brighter side is often given as the more prominent 
 of the two. 
 
 There is great variety in the forms of religion 
 
IDEA OF EVIL OUTSIDE OF REVELATION. 35 
 
 which occupy this stage of development. The wide 
 group of polytheistic faiths which meets us in the 
 earliest centres of civilisation of which we have any 
 record may be said to belong to it. Some of them 
 are greatly more advanced than others, and rise at 
 points into a region of pure moral conception ; but 
 in their origin all may be said to rest on a dual 
 imagination of nature, and none of them quite out¬ 
 reach the conditions of their origin. 
 
 The religion of ancient Egypt, supposed by some 
 to represent a more primitive stratum of religious 
 idea than any Aryan or Semitic faith, is a con¬ 
 spicuous example of the rudest form of this embodi¬ 
 ment of Nature-force in contrasted types of good and 
 evil. In this as in all Nature-religions, the sun under 
 various names is the great type of the Good—the 
 symbol of joyous activity and beneficence. Evil, 
 again, is pictured in the darkness of night, the cold 
 of winter, or the devastating heat of summer. Osiris 
 seems to gather to himself in the later Egyptian 
 mythology all the higher qualities of active goodness, 
 while Isis is the correspondent passive or receptive 
 principle. Beside these stands Typhon the evil 
 principle, conspicuous as powerful, able to slay 
 Osiris and banish him to the region of the dead, 
 but not able to detain him there. Sought after by 
 Isis, he is found and brought back to life again, as 
 the sun rises again after the darkness of the night. 
 
36 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 The Evil stands beside the Good, and enters into 
 conflict with it, but it no longer fills the imagination. 
 
 The religions of Phoenicia and of the older civi¬ 
 lisations which spread around the valley of the 
 Euphrates present a similarly rude deification of 
 Nature-force. The Baal of Phoenicia is now good 
 and now evil—now Baal-Adonis and now Baal- 
 Moloch. Ashera, or Astarte, the female divinity, is 
 also partly good and partly evil ; now the symbol of 
 joy and grace and beauty, in which aspect she seems 
 to be cognate with the Hellenic Aphrodite and the 
 Ephesian Diana, and now the symbol of terror and 
 grossness. Adonis, torn by a bloody boar, and again 
 reappearing to the light, is the same myth as Osiris 
 killed by Typhon—the Good overcome by the Evil, 
 but not conquered by it. The higher principle re¬ 
 gains its ascendancy, and takes its position in front 
 of the other. 
 
 In all these conceptions, obviously the Good and 
 Evil are alike drawn from Nature ; but there is some 
 movement of thought if not of moral interest. The 
 human intellect has grown, if not to understand 
 Nature, yet not merely to be afraid of it. Every¬ 
 where it sees two sides,—light as well as shade— 
 brilliancy, life, and abundance, as well as negation, 
 sterility, and darkness. Nature is no longer formless 
 or merely evil; there is a rude, if incoherent, attempt 
 at classification. Mere blind wonder and fear have 
 
IDEA OF EVIL OUTSIDE OF REVELATION. 37 
 
 ceased, and the mind recognises and symbolises 
 the Good no less than the Evil. The conceptions 
 are cloudy and interchangeable, but they are there. 
 The first step in the great movement of religious 
 thought has begun. 
 
 The Vedic and Hellenic mythologies mark the 
 greatest advance in this stage of religious thought; 
 and in the latter particularly, the stage outruns itself 
 into the moral sphere. Primarily, however, both 
 mythologies start with Nature. The gods of India 
 and of Greece, no less than of Egypt, are impersona¬ 
 tions of natural force. Indra is the symbol of the 
 Sun—of the serene sky—“who makes the lightning 
 to spring forth and launches the light.” The clouds 
 that darken the sky represent the powers of evil 
 that fight against Indra. They march under the 
 guidance of Vritra, or “ that which obscures.” Again, 
 the swift winds which chase the clouds are the 
 auxiliaries, of Indra, and the two first rays of the 
 morning are twin divinities, traversing the heaven in 
 a rapid car, and scattering in their passage fecundity 
 and life. Varuna (Heaven), Indra (Light), Agni 
 (Fire), are all in turn represented as the great 
 Nature-force and supreme Power. The hymns cele¬ 
 brate them simultaneously ; and each, without rela¬ 
 tion to the other, seems to occupy the chief place. 
 “ The whole mythology,” as Max Muller says, “ is 
 fluent.” The powers of Nature stand alongside of 
 
38 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 one another rather than in subordination to one 
 another. They are idealisations of natural force, and 
 yet they take to themselves moral attributes, and 
 clothe themselves at times with a gracious and divine 
 personality. It is hardly possible to excel the moral 
 spirit of some of the Vedic hymns, as, for example, 
 the-following: “Let me not yet, O Varuna, enter 
 into the house of clay. Have mercy, Almighty ; 
 have mercy. Through want of strength, thou strong 
 and bright God, have I gone to the wrong shore. 
 Have mercy, Almighty; have mercy. Whenever 
 we seem, O Varuna, to commit an offence—when¬ 
 ever we break thy law through thoughtlessness— 
 have mercy, Almighty; have mercy.” * 
 
 This moral growth is still more conspicuous in the 
 Homeric mythology. The Zeus of Homer is not 
 merely the Vedic Indra—the sun vanquishing dark¬ 
 ness ; but he is a father and king—the source of 
 moral order, the judge of domestic right. Pallas is 
 not merely the brightness of the serene sky, but the 
 reflection of thought—the source of prudence, elo¬ 
 quence, art, and wit. Apollo is the symbol at once 
 of light and of purity—the Hellenic messenger or 
 Messiah mediating betwixt heaven and earth ;-f* and 
 even Aphrodite, one of the least moral of the Hel- 
 
 * Hymn to Varuna (Rig. vii. 89), translated by Max Muller, ‘ Chips 
 from a German Workshop,’ i. 39. 
 
 t See Appendix VIII. 
 
IDEA OF EVIL OUTSIDE OF REVELATION. 39 
 
 lenic divinities, is not merely the impersonation of 
 voluptuous beauty, but of all bewitching softness 
 and poetic grace, as she rises from the foam of the 
 Cytherean wave. 
 
 But admitting all this, it is none the less true that 
 the most perfect of these conceptions have not only 
 their origin in Nature, but that they never com¬ 
 pletely rise above it; the vesture of their birth every¬ 
 where clings to them. The moral conception is 
 never clearly marked off from the unmoral or even 
 the immoral; the one passes into the other. Even 
 the personal conception sinks back into Nature 
 and loses itself ever and again in the vast and 
 dim realm of the cosmos. Human reflectiveness 
 has greatly advanced, and stands face to face 
 with Nature, no longer in mere dread, nor yet in 
 a mere twofold vision of darkness and light. The 
 darkness, indeed, has almost vanished from the 
 scene. The Evil has lost its power by losing its 
 grossness; it lies hidden away behind the bright 
 creation of that wonderful Olympus. But it is only 
 hidden away. There was such a sunlight in the early 
 Greek imagination that it suffused all the activities 
 of Nature and of life by its glow; but the gloomy 
 shadows lay in wait behind even the glowing Epos. 
 Olympus itself rested on a dark realm of night and 
 chaos, and the gloom of Hades haunted the hero 
 amidst all his cheerful toils and perils. Nowhere, 
 
40 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 certainly, in all human history, does the conception 
 of evil play a less powerful part than in the early 
 Greek religion, yet even here it is not banished. 
 It is the formless background out of which rises 
 alike the cosmos of natural beauty and the glory 
 of the heroic life. Moral qualities mingle in the 
 latter and touch it with a splendour more than 
 that of earth, but Nature imprisons and limits both 
 the Good and the Evil. Far as in special traits 
 they may rise above it, they still return to the soil 
 which nurtured them, and which conditions their 
 highest aspirations. 
 
 3. It is in a different quarter to which we must 
 look for the first definite growth of a moral concep¬ 
 tion of evil, or of such a marked separation betwixt 
 the Good and Evil as to place them in direct an¬ 
 tagonism. Early in the unknown history of the 
 Aryan tribes, but subsequent to their final dispersion 
 eastwards and westwards, there seems to have oc¬ 
 curred, in the primitive home of the race, something 
 of the nature of a religious revolution. The symbol¬ 
 ism of Nature, with its tendency to assume a poly¬ 
 theistic shape, and to obscure moral distinctions, 
 must have become unsatisfactory, and led to a 
 strong reaction in some higher mind or minds who 
 had power to turn the popular religious thought in 
 a new and more spiritual direction. The old an¬ 
 tagonisms of light and darkness, of sunshine and 
 
IDEA OF EVIL OUTSIDE OF REVELATION. 41 
 
 storm, became transformed, as Bunsen says,* into 
 antagonisms of good and evil—of Powers-exerting 
 a beneficent or corrupting influence on the mind. 
 The old Aryan nomenclature underwent a singu¬ 
 lar change. The terms remained, but received a 
 reversed significance. The appellation of the good 
 powers was applied to the powers of evil. Dcevas , 
 for example—cognate with Deva and Dyaus, the 
 name of God, the supreme type of light or the serene 
 sky, the Heaven-Father—came to denote the spirits 
 of evil, or the genii of darkness who fight under the 
 Prince of Darkness. 
 
 The author of this remarkable revolution in Aryan 
 thought is generally known as Zoroaster, or Zara- 
 thustra, as the name is more correctly written. But 
 beyond the fact of such a name, and the religion 
 connected with it, nothing can be said to be dis¬ 
 tinctly ascertained. All attempt to construct Persian 
 any more than Egyptian chronology and history 
 seems hopeless. The era of Zarathustra, accord¬ 
 ing to different writers, varies from about 600 B.c. 
 to 1000 B.C., or even a much earlier date. Most 
 scholars entitled to express an opinion on the subject 
 believe that he cannot be placed later than the 
 second-mentioned of these dates. But not only 
 is the date of Zarathustra uncertain, doubts have 
 even been cast upon his personality. It has been 
 * God in History, i. 273. 
 
42 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 suggested that the name may stand, not for an 
 individual, but for a school of early Aryan pro¬ 
 phets, who initiated the great change of religious 
 thought which has descended to us under the title of 
 Zoroastrianism. 
 
 The uncertainty which hangs around the origin of 
 the system cannot be said to attach to the system 
 itself. It is a distinctly-conceived dualism, in which 
 the physical contrasts presented by pre - existing 
 religions have become almost entirely merged in 
 moral antagonism. Man is represented as sur¬ 
 rounded by good and evil spirits, ranged under re¬ 
 spective leaders — Ormuzd or Ahura-Mazda, the 
 Holy-minded, and Ahriman or Anra-Mainyus, the 
 Evil-minded. These spiritual powers wage with 
 each other an incessant war, and man has to make 
 his choice betwixt them. He cannot serve two 
 masters. He must choose the one and reject the 
 other. The Good Power is represented as the 
 Creator. “ I worship and adore,” says Zarathustra, 
 “ the Creator of all things, Ahura-Mazda, active 
 Creator, . . . Lord of the worlds — Lord of good 
 things, . . . the first fashioner — who made the 
 pure creation.” * And yet Evil is supposed to be 
 also an independent power from the beginning — 
 having a coequal existence with the Good. “ In the 
 beginning there was,” says the prophet, “ a pair of 
 * Substance of hymn from the Avesta, Spiegel’s Translation, ii. 87. 
 
IDEA OF EVIL OUTSIDE OF REVELATION. 43 
 
 twins—two spirits, each having his own distinct 
 essence. These, the Good and the Evil, rule over us 
 in thought, word, and deed.” * And the difficulty of 
 the choice betwixt good and evil rests just in this, 
 that the one holds man as really, and, so to speak, 
 as rightfully, as the other. 
 
 It is unnecessary to dwell upon the marked de¬ 
 velopment of thought which this system exhibits. 
 Good and Evil are so far plainly transferred from the 
 region of Nature to the region of Spirit. The evil is 
 not that which merely hurts, or weakens, or destroys 
 man. It is not merely the gloom of night or the 
 fury of the desolating storm, as in Vedism ; or the 
 pale dread of an unknown future, as in Hellenism. 
 Good and Evil are nowhere seen interchanging, or 
 lying in indiscriminate confusion alongside one 
 another. But Evil is from the first a spiritual power 
 behind nature, and operating primarily upon the 
 mind and heart. It is twin with the Good ; and 
 through the necessary encounter of the two all 
 things are brought about — the world of life is 
 formed. But, twin in being and in the genesis of 
 the world, they are wholly opposed in character. 
 Veracity, purity, righteousness, are the attributes of 
 the one ; lies, uncleanness, and destructiveness are 
 the qualities of the other. In short, the sphere of 
 
 * Hymn from the Avesta, as given by Bunsen in his 1 God in His¬ 
 tory,’ i. 280. 
 
44 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 Nature, which we have seen to bound even the 
 loftiest conceptions of the Homeric pantheon, is 
 almost entirely left behind in this remarkable system. 
 We have passed from the outward to the inward— 
 from the cosmical, not merely to the personal, but 
 to the ethical. 
 
 Yet when we look more closely, there are traces 
 here also of the aboriginal soil out of which all Nature- 
 religions have grown. Good is not wholly spiritual, 
 or Evil either. A dead body is as polluted as a lie ; 
 and a fine field of wheat is as pleasing in the sight of 
 Ahura-Mazda as a purified conscience. It is obvious, 
 further, how the very conception of Evil as twin with 
 Good, and equally independent with it, serves so far 
 to destroy its moral character. That which is an 
 inherent and necessary power in the creation of the 
 world cannot be an essential contradiction of its 
 highest law. Rather it must enter into all created 
 things as their true complement and condition. 
 There are passages from the Zend-Avesta, which 
 seem to rise above this necessary dualism or essential 
 twofoldness of evil as well as good in the composition 
 of the world. Bunsen and others have at least drawn 
 a higher meaning from these passages. But there can 
 be little doubt that Persian religious thought never 
 surmounted the fundamental dualism on which it is 
 based, and which has been so prominently identified 
 with it. Some of the nobler Gathas, or hymns of the 
 
IDEA OF EVIL OUTSIDE OF REVELATION. 45 
 
 Persian scriptures, may speak of the world as divine, 
 or of the Good Spirit ruling us all; but in others the 
 Evil Spirit claims to rank alongside of the Good. 
 And it was the fate of Zoroastrianism to plant the 
 dualistic conception so deep in the human conscious¬ 
 ness, that it is seen constantly reappearing in the 
 subsequent history of religious thought, and even 
 within the sphere of Christianity itself. 
 
 Nothing, indeed, is more remarkable than the 
 vitality of this conception. It is the definite basis, if 
 not of all Gnostic thought, of those special forms of 
 it which were allied to Orientalism, and which are 
 sometimes spoken of as branches of the Syrian in 
 contrast to the Alexandrian Gnosis. The question 
 of evil, of its origin and its relation to the Supreme 
 Being, was the great question of Gnosticism ; and the 
 solution which it gave of the question from one point 
 of view was plainly borrowed from Zoroastrianism. 
 It imagined the Demiourgos, or creator of the 
 natural world, to be an actively malignant or evil 
 being at war with the Supreme—an Ahriman in 
 conflict with the absolute Source of life and good¬ 
 ness. There was this difference—a difference so far 
 in favour of the original system—that in all the 
 phases of Gnosticism the higher Divine Principle 
 is conceived as infinitely apart from the work of 
 creation, abiding in an exclusive supremacy. It is 
 the Evil that is creative or demiurgic, and not the 
 
46 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 Good. The two are not coactive, but the Evil is, 
 so to speak, the only activity invading the passive 
 sphere or abyss of Being. A latent Pantheism, in 
 short, lurks in all Gnostic thought, of which there is no ' 
 trace in primitive Zoroastrianism. Yet the dualistic 
 stands in front of the pantheistic conception, and 
 probably gave to the various forms of the Syrian 
 Gnosis its popular hold upon many minds in the 
 first Christian ages. 
 
 In the third century Dualism took fresh life and 
 burst forth with new momentum under the name of 
 Manichasism. This system especially emphasised 
 the power of Evil as a distinct and coeternal prin¬ 
 ciple in antagonism with the Good.* It acquired 
 a rapid ascendancy, and exercised more influence 
 than any preceding systems of the same character. 
 In the fourth and fifth centuries it paraded itself 
 as almost a rival of Christianity. Augustine was for 
 a time its disciple, and speaks of its great teacher, 
 Faustus, with all his superficiality and lack of precise 
 thought, as a man of eloquence and influence. But 
 even this great outburst of dualistic speculation by 
 no means exhausted its vitality. It sprang up again 
 suddenly in the East in the twelfth century, found¬ 
 ing a new sect under the name of Paulicians, who 
 
 * In Augustine’s Twenty-three Books ‘Contra Faustum Manichseum,’ 
 Faustus is represented as denying that he believes in two gods, but 
 he admits belief in two principles—“Est quidem quod duo principia 
 confitemur.”—Lib. 21. c. I.; Migne’s Ed., viii. 387. 
 
IDEA OF EVIL OUTSIDE OF REVELATION. 47 
 
 seem somehow to have identified their characteris¬ 
 tic principles with the teaching of St Paul. Gib¬ 
 bon has given, in the fifty-fourth chapter of his great 
 history, an animated description of this sect, and 
 of the rapidity with which it spread, notwithstand¬ 
 ing violent persecution, through Bulgaria and the 
 borders of the Greek empire into Italy, Germany, 
 and France. “It was discovered,” he says, “that 
 many thousand Catholics of rank and of either sex 
 had embraced the Manichaean heresy”* (under this 
 new name). The heresy spread, especially in the 
 south of France ; and there, amongst other uncatholic 
 opinions, filled up the measure of heterodoxy and 
 contempt for sacred forms which called forth and 
 consecrated the horrors of the Albigensian war. It 
 can hardly be said that even in modern times this 
 old conception has lost its power, when we find 
 one great philosopher writing of another—Mr J. S. 
 Mill of his father—“ that he found it impossible to 
 believe that a world so full of evil was the work 
 of an author combining infinite power with perfect 
 goodness and righteousness;” but that he by no 
 means discredited in the same degree “ the Sabaean 
 and Manichaean theory of a Good and an Evil Prin¬ 
 ciple struggling against each other for the govern¬ 
 ment of the universe.”-}* 
 
 * Vol. x. p. 177—Milman’s Ed. 
 
 t Autobiography by J. S. Mill, 1873. 
 
48 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 4. The conception of evil was destined to undergo 
 still further modifications outside the sphere of Juda¬ 
 ism and Christianity. The original worship of the 
 Aryan race, which under the influence of a noble 
 inspiration passed into the ethical ardour of Zoro¬ 
 astrianism, became transformed on another side, first 
 into the sacerdotal pantheism of Brahmanism, and 
 then into the philosophy of Buddha, which has re¬ 
 ceived various interpretations, but which, in all its 
 interpretations, more or less implies the same con¬ 
 ception of evil. It is no part of our work to trace 
 these developments of religious thought flowing 
 from the same fountain-head, partly evolutionary 
 and partly reactionary in their relation to one 
 another. All that it concerns us to note is, that 
 the idea of evil, which is very prominent in both, is 
 quite different from that clearly-defined personality 
 which meets us in the Zoroastrian or Irano-Persian 
 system of which we have been speaking. There the 
 world of created life—man and all things—share in 
 the Evil which, no less than the Good, has been 
 concerned in their production. But while sharing in 
 evil as an essential element of his being, man is at 
 the same time invited to active struggle with it. He 
 has the choice of the Good or the Evil, and all his 
 higher activities are evoked to overcome the one 
 and embrace the other. The Kingdom of Darkness 
 holds him within its sphere, and the Prince of 
 
IDEA OF EVIL OUTSIDE OF REVELATION. 49 
 
 Darkness rules him by right, so to speak, of joint 
 property; yet there appears to be a sphere within 
 the conditions of his present life where the evil may 
 be vanquished. The pious heart is promised the 
 inheritance of the earth* The struggle here, there¬ 
 fore, is not hopeless, and human life may be glorified 
 in deliverance from evil. But when we turn to 
 Brahmanism, we find that evil is no longer merely 
 present in life—no longer merely claims a joint share 
 in it—but has, in fact, become its characteristic con¬ 
 dition. Existence itself, or at least conscious ex¬ 
 istence, has become the Evil. It is no longer a fight 
 against an evil power ; it is itself evil. To have 
 passe^from the infinite to the finite—from uncon¬ 
 sciousness to consciousness—to have been born into 
 this world of change at all, is evil. There is, accord- 
 ingly, not merely evil in the world, concerned in its 
 production, holding its own in its government, but 
 the world is evil itself, and the mere fact of life is a 
 fall from true Being and Good. 
 
 This may seem a strange outcome of the lively 
 Nature-worship of the Aryan tribes, as depicted in 
 the hymns of the Rig-Veda. But it seems to have 
 been a natural consequence of the changes which 
 passed upon the race as they went eastward, settling 
 
 * “ O Mazda! when on earth our spirit is hardly pressed in the fight, 
 come thou to our aid ! The pious hearts dost thou give to inherit the 
 earth.”—Hymn from the Avesta, as given by Bunsen, i. 280. 
 
50 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 in the valley of the Ganges, and exchanging their 
 nomadic and warlike character for a pacific and 
 settled social state. Surrounded by luxuriant and 
 gigantic forms of nature, and under a comparatively 
 unchanging sky, they seem to have lost their natural 
 activity both of life and imagination. Their bards, 
 as Bunsen says, “ gradually became a guild which 
 shaped itself into a priestly caste.”* Their versatile 
 and joyous symbolism of Nature degenerated into a 
 sacerdotal system, in which Indra and his cognate 
 divinities passed out of notice, and Brahma took their 
 place. Apparently at first a mere abstract name for 
 the contemplation of what was “ sacred ” or “ holy,” 
 this word came to denote (in a neuter forn%-J-) the 
 Divine, the Eternal—in opposition to the temporal, 
 the phenomenal—and also (in a masculine form) the 
 God of the Brahmans, or the chief God of the later 
 Hindu mythology. The idea of Brahma, however, 
 even as a distinct object of worship, remained very 
 impersonal, and never acquired any hold of the pop¬ 
 ular mind. He is nowhere so much a personality as 
 a Universal Soul or Spirit of the world, of which all 
 finite things are the manifestation. “The Universe 
 is Brahma, it proceeds from Brahma,J and is finally 
 again absorbed by Brahma.” Brahma is Being, pure 
 
 * Bunsen, i. 317. 
 
 + Brahma (neut.), Brahma (mas.) See Appendix IX. 
 
 + Creuzer’s Symbolik, &c., i. 496. 
 
IDEA OF EVIL OUTSIDE OF REVELATION. 5 I 
 
 Being; all else is his word or image. But in so far 
 as Being has passed into Form, and the Eternal 
 clothed itself with the temporal, and the Infinite 
 become the finite, evil has arisen. To be out of 
 Brahma in any sense is so far evil. “ The cycle of 
 the universe is an error* Brahma is the only 
 reality. “Thou, I, the universe must pass away;”f 
 Brahma alone abides, “without dimension, quality, 
 character, or duality.” j “A wise man must anni¬ 
 hilate all objects of sense in his mind, and contem¬ 
 plate continually only the one Mind which is like 
 pure space? § 
 
 It is unnecessary to dwell upon the vast change 
 which has passed upon Aryan thought in the elabo¬ 
 ration of such a system as this, and how entirely it 
 transfers us to a new point of view regarding evil. 
 In one sense it might seem an advanced point of view. 
 It is the result of a more distinct effort of thought 
 —a more meditative philosophy. The Dualism of 
 the Zoroastrian is a more spontaneous suggestion 
 than the Pantheism of the Brahman—an older and 
 so to speak a rougher and more popular type of 
 thought. But the Brahmanical conception of evil, 
 later as it is in its development and more profound 
 in mystery, is really not an advance upon the 
 Zoroastrian conception ; rather it is a degeneracy. 
 
 * Extracts from the Vedanta Philosophy, quoted by Bunsen, i. 332. 
 
 + Ibid. + Ibid., p. 331. § Ibid. 
 
52 
 
 THE CHE/ST/AH DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 The moral import which we were able to trace 
 everywhere in the one has quite gone out of the 
 other. There can be no genuine moral sphere in an 
 existence which is evil by the mere fact that it is at 
 all; whose very creaturely beginning is a fall from 
 the Divine, and whose only salvation is a return to 
 it, not by any moral effort or renovation, but by re¬ 
 absorption. This—the only Good—stood at an infinite 
 distance from the creature, whose destiny it was to 
 pass from one form of life to another, conditioned 
 by the preceding. The doctrine of Metempsychosis 
 crowned the Brahmanic system, and contributed to 
 render it one of the most mournful and oppressive 
 of all religions. Life was not only evil in its pre¬ 
 sent consciousness, but there opened before it a 
 series of changes all more or less evil, from which 
 there was no escape but by losing all individuality, 
 and perishing in the abyss of pure Being. 
 
 So far, Buddhism was a reaction against all this 
 oppressive sense of misery in life. It taught, in 
 opposition to the apparently endless law of trans¬ 
 migration, and the sacerdotalism which made capital 
 out of this law, that happiness was to be found in a 
 life of conscious virtue, and that religion was not a 
 system of rites and ceremonies, but a true order of 
 reverence, and charity, and self-denial. “To conquer 
 one’s self is a greater victory than to gain a battle.” 
 “ He who for only one moment contemplates him- 
 
IDEA OF EVIL OUTSIDE OF REVELATION. 53 
 
 self in utter repose ”—“ who cherishes reverence for 
 the virtuous ”—this one act of devotion is better 
 than a hundred years’ sacrifices. “To refrain at all 
 times from angry words, and never to do another in¬ 
 jury; to observe temperance ; to live in profoundest 
 meditation,—lo! this is enjoined in the Buddhas.”* 
 Sayings such as these, which are to be found without 
 number in the Buddhist scriptures, are sufficient to 
 prove the high moral tone of Buddhism, and the 
 extent to which it formed a reformation of the 
 Brahmanical system, which, like the Pharisaism 
 of the Gospels, had become intolerable to many 
 pious hearts. But, not to speak of deeper defects, 
 Buddhism, with all its strenuous culture of moral 
 life, never rose above the degrading conception of 
 existence as a whole presented in the older faith. 
 It preached the divinity of virtue, the negation of 
 desire, the beauty of repose. It tried to clear a space 
 within the present life for the exercise of reverence, 
 and purity, and charity, and honourable obedience. 
 “ He who cherishes reverence in his heart, and ever 
 honours his superiors, to him shall be ever added 
 these four gifts—longlife, beauty, joy, power.”*f* But 
 withal, it left life as a natural fact under the curse of 
 evil. Of its four sublime verities, the first is that 
 “ existence is suffering,”—and the second, that the 
 
 * Extracts from Buddhist Hymns, quoted by Bunsen, i. 346 et seq. 
 
 + Ibid., i. 347. 
 
54 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 cause of the suffering is desire or sensation. There is 
 a sense, indeed, in which these Buddhistic aphorisms 
 might bear a Christian meaning. There might seem 
 little to choose betwixt the well-known language of 
 Job anxl the words of the Buddha proverb, “Man’s 
 birth is full of trouble, and full of toil is his life 
 also;”* and “ He that loseth his life shall find it,”— 
 “ Whoso loveth father and mother better than me,” 
 might seem to find their echo in the divine honour 
 attributed in another proverb to him “ who, loose 
 from all human ties, has risen to the divine com¬ 
 munion.”*!* But the spiritual standpoint is vitally 
 different in the two cases. The life of sense, the 
 life of affection, even the life of thought on its 
 active, speculative, or scientific side, is all more or 
 less evil from the Buddhistic point of view. Perfec¬ 
 tion—Nirvana—however we may specially interpret 
 the word, is only to be attained by self-contempla¬ 
 tion, and in the end by ecstasy. Good, in short, 
 only arises in so far as life in all its actualities is left 
 behind. “ The greatest happiness is, not to be born ; 
 the next greatest is, for those who have been born 
 to die soon.” Even according to Bunsen, who has 
 found a higher divine meaning in Buddhism than 
 many others, this was its final dogma. The curse 
 of evil clung to all sense of individual being. Bliss 
 
 * Extracts.from Buddhist Hymns, quoted by Bunsen, i. 348. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 353. 
 
IDEA OF EVIL OUTSIDE OF REVELATION. 55 
 
 was only reached by annihilating all the conditions 
 of relative existence, and plunging into Nirvana— 
 the Void—or, so far as can be understood, into 
 Annihilation.* 
 
 If the Dualism of the Irano-Persian faith per¬ 
 petuated itself in certain forms of Gnosticism, the 
 conception of evil as material existence was no less 
 persistent in the speculation of succeeding ages. It 
 may be questioned whether Brahmanism or Buddhism 
 exerted any direct influence upon Alexandrian phil¬ 
 osophy, or the successive forms of what is known as 
 Neo-Platonism. But there can be no doubt that 
 it was the same thought which repeated itself in 
 those speculations. Evil was identified with finite 
 being, or matter per se. Existence of itself simply 
 was conceived of as a descent from the Divine. The 
 idea of emanation, which underlay both the great 
 oriental systems, was no less characteristic of the 
 Alexandrian Gnosis in all its branches. The Infinite 
 or pure Being was the only reality—all else was but 
 as the shadow or manifestation of the Primal Source; 
 and in the progress of descent from this source, evil 
 emerged so soon as the fontal stream of spiritual life 
 touched matter. Every successive evolution of the 
 divine element grew feebler till it ended in opposi¬ 
 tion to the Divine. Matter and its adjuncts—sensa¬ 
 tion, desire, bodily affections of whatever kind—were 
 * Burnout, Int. a l’Hist. du Buddhisme, p. 522. 
 
5 6 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 all more or less at variance with the Divine, and 
 therefore to be resisted as evil. It is needless to point 
 out how pervading this thought has been, not only 
 in Gnosticism and various forms of medieval mysti¬ 
 cism, but throughout the whole history of monasti- 
 cism, and even many practices of ordinary Christian 
 devotion. It has been the latent spring of Chris¬ 
 tian asceticism in all its branches. Evil in such 
 cases may not have been exclusively traced to 
 matter, but it has been more or less associated with 
 it; and the way to be good has been supposed to 
 lie through self-mortification and the triumph of 
 the spirit over the desires of the body. The 
 Buddhist doctrine of the annihilation of self, extra¬ 
 vagant as it may appear when stated in its naked¬ 
 ness, has a deep root in human nature; and the 
 thought of evil only passing away when all self-feel¬ 
 ing has been lost in the Divine, reappears in almost 
 every phase of exalted religious feeling. It may re¬ 
 ceive a purely spiritual interpretation; but it is also apt 
 to pass into externality, and to confound wrong with 
 certain aspects of the natural life. The activities of 
 natural healthfulness, the joys of sense, the joys even 
 of the domestic hearth—whatever intensifies the mun¬ 
 dane aspects of existence—come to be regarded with 
 suspicion as partaking more or less of the lower or 
 material sphere of being. All connected with this 
 
IDEA OF EVIL OUTSIDE OF REVELATION. 57 
 
 sphere is more or less of the nature of evil. The 
 Good is only reached in the negation of nature, and in 
 a supposed spiritual elevation of feeling which leaves 
 far behind all mere joys of earth. And so it often 
 happens that a mysticism which claims in its very 
 loftiness to be peculiarly Christian, falls back by its 
 excess into the Buddhistic or Gnostic error of con¬ 
 sidering matter and its adjuncts as the source of evil. 
 Manifold as are the forms of error, its range of de¬ 
 velopment lies along two or three main lines; and 
 these lines are seen constantly repeating themselves, 
 sometimes in the most unexpected quarters. 
 
 5. We have spoken of the idea of Evil in the 
 early Hellenic religion as lying alongside the Good in 
 unconscious simplicity. Zeus is the father of gods 
 and men, and yet the faithless husband. The free¬ 
 hearted Achilles hates concealment. Ulysses is 
 commended for his clever powers of deceit. The 
 moral idea has not worked itself clear from the 
 vague indiscriminate aspects of nature or of life 
 in which “ all things come alike to all: there 
 is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked ; 
 to the good, and to the clean, and to the un¬ 
 clean.” * But Hellenic thought, it is necessary to 
 remember, is a great history of itself. It passes 
 through many stages ; and in the course of its de- 
 
 * Eccles. ix. 2. 
 
58 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 velopment the idea of evil becomes greatly deep¬ 
 ened, and the conception of a Nemesis or moral 
 order rises within it, if not so purely, yet almost 
 as conspicuously and majestically as in the Hebrew 
 Prophets. The chief sphere of this development is 
 the Greek Tragedy. Behind all the activities of 
 life, and all the play of dramatic passion which 
 compose this Tragedy, there is a stern background 
 of Righteousness which will by no means clear the 
 guilty. A shadowy terror overhangs all wrong¬ 
 doing, and a curse which cannot be turned away 
 pursues the offenders. This moral background is 
 the great inspiring ideal of the Greek drama, and 
 lends to it its chief grandeur and power. The ideal, 
 in its mere force of awe and majesty, may be said 
 to rival that of Hebrew thought; but in other and 
 essentially moral respects it falls below it. The 
 sphere of moral freedom is recognised but dimly; 
 the distinction betwixt voluntary and involuntary 
 evil comes forth but darkly and hesitatingly. Nemesis 
 is just, but with a justice that spares not; and the 
 darkness of a sublime despair settles on the awful 
 scenes of human crime and misery. The moral eleva¬ 
 tion of Greek Tragedy, and the contrasts of right and 
 wrong which it sets forth, are the highest and gravest 
 efforts of Gentile thought in a religious direction. 
 They bring us to the very verge of Revelation, but 
 
IDEA OF EVIL OUTSIDE OF REVELATION. 59 
 
 they do not pass within it. And deep and sad, 
 tender and pathetic, as are its pictures of human 
 life and heroic duty, the idea of evil which enters 
 into it so largely is yet far short of the idea of sin 
 which emerges on the very threshold of the Hebrew 
 Scriptures. 
 
6o 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 4 
 
 III. 
 
 OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 WHEN we turn from the various systems of Nature- 
 religion, even in their most developed form, to Re¬ 
 velation, we find ourselves in a very different atmos¬ 
 phere. Whence this atmosphere has come—to what 
 special sources we are to trace the higher religious 
 views that here meet us—it is no part of our present 
 business to inquire. This would involve a treatment 
 of the whole subject of Revelation—what it means 
 —how far it is natural, and how far supernatural. 
 It would involve, moreover, the treatment of many 
 literary questions regarding the books of the Old 
 Testament—their age, origin, authenticity, and in¬ 
 tegrity—all of which we must equally pass by. 
 These are subjects belonging to a different branch 
 of Theology from that with which we are concerned, 
 and they must be dealt with on their own merits. 
 No one in a time like ours, speaking from a scien¬ 
 tific point of view, can assume such questions to 
 be settled. While we decline to enter upon them, 
 
OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SIN. 6l 
 
 therefore, we do not venture to assume the conclu¬ 
 sions of one school or another regarding them. The 
 dogmatic theologian is not bound to do so. He 
 takes the Bible as he finds it. Whatever may be 
 the authorship and age of its several books, he sees 
 with sufficient clearness that they contain a pro¬ 
 gressive development of religious thought and senti¬ 
 ment ; and he has no difficulty in detecting what 
 general elements of this thought and sentiment are of 
 earlier and what of later origin. No one can doubt, 
 for example—whatever conclusion may be ultimately 
 reached as to the origin and composition of the 
 Pentateuch — that the five books traditionally 
 attributed to Moses contain the earliest Scriptures, 
 and consequently the earliest religious ideas, of the 
 Hebrews. They may or may not also contain later 
 elements. The legal and priestly institutions which 
 they describe may—some of them at least—belong to 
 a period subsequent to that of Moses. But no one 
 who has any historic sense can doubt that the nar¬ 
 rative pictures of Genesis belong to a more primitive 
 type of thought than anything else in the Old 
 Testament, and the theologian whose province it is 
 to trace the evolution of Doctrine in Scripture is 
 therefore warranted in assuming them as the start¬ 
 ing-point of his exposition. Even if there be the 
 traces here and there of later colouring—of light 
 reflected backwards from a prophetic vision which 
 
62 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 did not reach its fulness till long after the time of 
 Moses—this would not affect his conclusions. Here 
 and everywhere he must gather together the threads 
 of revealed thought, and discriminate its lines of 
 advance with the best skill he can. No traditionary 
 • conception of Revelation or of the contents of Scrip¬ 
 ture, however hard and fast that conception may be, 
 can save him from this task of interpretation, and 
 help him in the discharge of it. The sum of re¬ 
 vealed truth is to him still only what he finds in 
 Scripture. 
 
 Our present concern is with the development of 
 the idea of sin in Old Testament Revelation ; and our 
 statement is, that so soon as we come within the 
 sphere of this Revelation we find ourselves breathing 
 a different atmosphere from that which comes from 
 any of the Nature-religions of which we have been 
 speaking. In all of these the idea of evil is in some 
 form or another an external idea. It comes to man 
 even in its moral guise — in Zoroastrianism and 
 Hellenism—from the outside. It is a power which 
 holds him—the shadow of destructive Nature-force 
 —or the idealisation of the more complex elements 
 of wrong that surround him in life and society. It 
 is hardly, if at all, an error of his own mind, or the 
 depravation of his own will. But these, on the 
 other hand, are the aspects in which from the first 
 
OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SIN. 63 
 
 the idea of evil comes before us in Scripture. The 
 spectre arises from within and not from without. 
 The enemy is in man himself, and not in nature or 
 in any symbol drawn from the suggestions of nature 
 or of external life. In other words, as soon as we 
 come within the sphere of Revelation we have left 
 nature far behind, and are in front of a human 
 Will. The sphere of Revelation is from the begin¬ 
 ning the sphere of Morality, towards which we have 
 been slowly rising in our Upward advance along the 
 line of Nature-religion. 
 
 It is impossible not to be struck with this change, 
 not merely as it affects man, but as it affects nature. 
 Nature is no longer a manifestation of evil powers, 
 or of powers partly evil and partly good. The 
 primitive man of Hebrew literature is placed in a 
 garden eastward in Eden in which there “grows 
 every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for 
 food.” “ Every herb which is upon the face of all 
 the earth,” and “ every tree,” and “ the fowl of the 
 air,” and “ every living thing that moveth upon the 
 earth,” are all given into the possession of man for 
 rule and enjoyment. Nothing can be further from 
 the picture than any shadow of evil influence. “ And 
 God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, 
 it was very good.” * Man is planted in the midst 
 
 * Gen. i. 31. 
 
64 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 of these as lord of all. There is no suggestion of 
 conflict—of the struggle of good against evil. There 
 is no evil as yet in nature or in man. 
 
 It is impossible to conceive a greater contrast to 
 the picture presented to us in the dawn of the re¬ 
 ligious consciousness outside of Revelation. And 
 yet this is only one point of the contrast. There 
 are others still more important. Not only are 
 nature and man set in a different light, but the 
 Divine is, above all, differently conceived. The God 
 or Gods of nature are dual or manifold in their con¬ 
 ception—the wavering reflection of man’s varying 
 experience of joy and suffering. Their relation to 
 man varies with the promptings of his own heart, 
 and the monitions of his intellect feebly groping to 
 comprehend the problem of his being. In the 
 Hebrew Scriptures the Divine power is drawn from 
 the first with a firm and clear hand, as the creative 
 Source of all being, order, and life. “ In the beginn¬ 
 ing God created the heaven and the earth;” “and 
 God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 
 And God saw the light, that it was good : and God 
 divided the light from the darkness. And God called 
 the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.” * 
 
 It is hardly possible for language to measure the 
 length and breadth of advance which is here repre¬ 
 sented, beyond any stage of religious thought that is 
 
 * Gen. i. i, 3-5. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SIN 65 
 
 external to the Scriptures. The great features of 
 nature—the heaven and the earth, the light and 
 the darkness—are no longer first, but second. A 
 creative Mind whose word is law stands at their head. 
 A free Will whose work is Providence calls them into 
 being and directs all their movements. Instead of 
 looking with a confused and troubled glance upon 
 the dim personalities of man’s imagination in the 
 earth and sky, the sunshine and storm, here we look 
 beyond heaven and earth alike, directly into a re¬ 
 gion of Divine Intelligence and creative Will. And 
 this fundamental difference makes everything else 
 different. We are no longer in a region of Nature- 
 shadows, but of moral realities,—a Divine Will on 
 one side, and an ordered nature and human will on 
 the other side. And it is out of these essential and 
 primary relations of being that the conception of sin 
 arises. It is a conception which includes evil, and 
 yet is deeper far than any conception of evil we have 
 yet reached. 
 
 This will fully appear as we proceed with our ex¬ 
 position,—1st, Of the Fall, or primal act of sin, de¬ 
 picted in the third chapter of Genesis; 2d, Of the 
 several expressions used throughout the Old Testa¬ 
 ment Scriptures to denote sin; and 3d, and more 
 particularly, as we glance rapidly at the development 
 of the idea in these Scriptures in its relations to the 
 
 E 
 
66 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 divine law, the divine personality, and the commu¬ 
 nity and mankind at large. 
 
 What is known as the Fall, or primal act of sin, not 
 merely stands, after the act of creation, at the foun¬ 
 tain-head of Hebrew literature, but enters more or 
 less into all the developments of the Hebrew religious 
 consciousness. Certain features of the narrative, on 
 the most traditionary view that may be taken of it, 
 are obviously figurative. They are features, that is 
 to say, of a moral incident; and the incident remains 
 the same whether we conceive these features to re¬ 
 present external facts or not. This applies especially 
 to the supposed action and speech of the serpent, 
 and the virtues attributed to “the tree of the know¬ 
 ledge of good and evil.” Nothing but confusion of 
 thought can arise from attempting to fix a definite 
 meaning on such accessories of the incident,* all the 
 genuine meaning of which arises from the moral 
 portrait which it sets before us. This moral portrait 
 is a true expression of the religious thought of the 
 
 * This was clearly pointed out long ago in Dr Hill’s Lectures—to 
 refer to a well-known Scotch theological authority—vol. ii. p. 4, 5. 
 “ Several parts of the history,” he says, “ cannot be understood in a 
 literal sense. Thus it is not to be supposed that the tree of which man 
 was forbidden to eat had the power which the name seems to imply, 
 and which the serpent suggests, of making those who ate the fruit wise, 
 knowing good and evil; neither is it to be supposed that the serpent 
 at that time possessed those powers of speech and reason which the 
 narrative seems to ascribe to him, or that the plain meaning of the 
 \yords, ‘ The seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent,’ 
 expresses the whole punishment of the tempter. ” 
 
OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SIN 67 
 
 Hebrews, and it is their thought as to sin which we 
 are in search of, and with which we have now to 
 deal, whatever may be made of the literary vesture 
 or form in which that thought is expressed. Here, as 
 elsewhere, the reality of the thought is not depen¬ 
 dent upon the view we may take of the narrative 
 forms in which it is conveyed. 
 
 What, then, is the sum of the moral portrait 
 presented to us in the third chapter of Genesis ? 
 What are the elements of the primitive religious con¬ 
 sciousness of the Hebrews on the subject, as here 
 depicted ? There is, first, the reality of a divine 
 will and of a human will in the face of it. The 
 human is the image or reflection of the Divine: “And 
 God said. Let us make man in our image, after our 
 likeness.” It is true that this is a part of the prior 
 creation narrative, and not of the Fall narrative, and 
 that these narratives are possibly not from the same 
 original source;—so modern criticism assures us.* But 
 whether from diverse sources or not, it is the same 
 thought they reveal. The man who is tempted in the 
 third chapter, is the same man, made in the image of 
 God, spoken of in the first. He is a being, that is to 
 say, gifted with reason and moral freedom; the image 
 and the subject of God. The command given him 
 in the second chapter, which is admitted to belong 
 
 to the same narrative as the third, is an expression 
 
 • 
 
 * See Appendix X. 
 
68 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 of this subjection, and, at the same time, of man’s re¬ 
 sponsibility. “And the Lord God commanded the 
 man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest 
 freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good 
 and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that 
 thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” This com¬ 
 mand is presupposed in the third chapter, and forms 
 the key to its whole meaning. 
 
 Here, therefore, we have two great moral concep¬ 
 tions—conceptions so vital that they lie at the foun¬ 
 dation of all Scriptural theology and all Scriptural 
 ethics—the divine will addressing the human will 
 and intelligence which it has called into being; in 
 other words, drawing out still more fully the moral 
 picture presented to us. We have (i) the divine 
 will, (2) the expression of this will in a divine com¬ 
 mand or law, and (3) a creaturely will the subject of 
 the law; and if all this has as yet nothing to do 
 with sin, it is nevertheless the essential background 
 to the idea. It enables us, and compels us from the 
 first, to set the idea in its true light, and to recognise 
 that its genuine and exclusive meaning is moral, and 
 that it vanishes save in front of the Divine as will 
 and law. 
 
 The human will thus placed under authority, and 
 made the subject of a revealed command, is first 
 enticed and then yields to disobedience. “Now the 
 serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field 
 
OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SIN. 69 
 
 which the Lord God ” (Jahveh-Elohim) “ had made. 
 And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, 
 Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden ? And 
 the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the 
 fruit of the trees of the garden: but of the fruit of 
 the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God 
 hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch 
 it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman. 
 Ye shall not surely die : for God doth know that in 
 the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, 
 and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. 
 And when the woman saw that the tree was good 
 for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a 
 tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the 
 fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her hus¬ 
 band with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of 
 them both were opened, and they knew that they 
 were naked.”* And when they heard the voice of 
 the Lord God in the garden, they were afraid, and 
 hid themselves. 
 
 Such is the picture of the Fall. It is unnecessary, 
 and would be quite useless, to try to give any ex¬ 
 planation of its special features ;—of the serpent; 
 of the form of temptation, and its special nature— 
 whether ambition or sensuality; of the growth of 
 sinful desire in the woman, her act of disobedience, 
 and the participation of her husband in it; of its 
 
 * Gen. iii. 1-7. 
 
70 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 effects in the awaking of hitherto unknown condi¬ 
 tions of shame in relation to one another and the 
 divine voice. All these aspects of the subject may 
 furnish matters of comment, although I hardly think 
 of reasonable or useful comment, to those who care 
 to inquire into them. But it is not at all necessary 
 to deal specially with them in order to enter into the 
 full meaning of the incident as a moral transaction. 
 The sum of this meaning is plainly that the human 
 will, in face of the divine command, yields to the 
 force of temptation and external inducement, and 
 violates the command. This is the entrance of sin 
 into the world—the transgression of the divine law. 
 The will which was made subject to law—the happi¬ 
 ness of which was to lie within the law, in obedience 
 to it—turns against it and seeks its happiness outside 
 of the law, in opposition to it. The revolt, moreover, 
 is induced by external enticement or influence ; in 
 
 other words, the will or spirit becomes subject to evil 
 
 / 
 
 suggestion and the influence of Nature in place of 
 divine law. This is the moral essence of the story. 
 Let us draw out more fully its several points. They 
 sum up a world of meaning, which no analysis can 
 well exhaust. 
 
 (a.) Evil, as it emerges upon us in the primitive 
 Hebrew consciousness, is not something outside of 
 us, but essentially something in us. It is the wilful 
 turning away from the Divine, clearly revealed, ex- 
 
OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRrNE OF SIN. J I 
 
 pressing itself clearly and unequivocally in con¬ 
 science—“Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye 
 touch it, lest ye die; ” and the wilful yielding to 
 Nature or some outside influence—“As good for food, 
 pleasant to the eyes, or to be desired to make one 
 wise.” It is this that makes the evil. The outside— 
 Nature—has only force or power over the will after 
 it has yielded from within to it. Or at least, the will 
 must turn from the Divine to something else not 
 Divine, before the evil lays hold of it. Something 
 else must be desirable in preference before the evil 
 emerges. In other words, the good lies in the con¬ 
 formity of the divine and human will. The evil can 
 only arise from their nonconformity. 
 
 But it may be said. Is the evil not already posited 
 outside of man in the idea of the serpent as the 
 tempter ? Have we not here the evil Power already 
 opposed to the good, and man represented as his vic¬ 
 tim snatched by his wiles from the possession and en¬ 
 joyment of the good ? The later thought of Jewish 
 theology and the Christian Church, in its various 
 branches, have associated the evil personality known 
 as Satan or the Devil with the serpent of Genesis. 
 And good reasons may be urged for this association. 
 The idea of the serpent tempting man and exciting 
 him to evil, points to the idea of an evil Principle 
 having already entered into the world and acquired 
 influence in it. The cunning with which the serpent 
 
72 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 works upon the desire of the woman to rise above 
 the limits of her creaturely existence, and be as God 
 to whom she is rightfully subject, is truly diabolical. 
 No doubt, therefore, was felt on this point in the later 
 Jewish Church ; and the Christian consciousness, 
 which was influenced so largely by Jewish thought, 
 readily took up the idea and expanded it. But 
 in the narrative of Genesis, taken by itself, there 
 is nothing of this later view. The serpent is more 
 subtil than any beast of the field, but nothing more. 
 The curse pronounced against him alludes entirely 
 to his animal nature. And as a mere matter of 
 historical criticism, therefore, we are not warranted 
 in transferring the later conception to the earlier 
 stage of Hebrew thought. Whatever we may make 
 of the serpent and his cunning, we cannot say that a 
 Power, and still less a Spirit, of evil was already con¬ 
 ceived by the Hebrew mind as clearly existing out¬ 
 side of man. I do not profess-to explain fully this 
 feature of the incident. I am content to leave many 
 things unexplained in Scripture and elsewhere. 
 Possibly there were elements in the Hebrew con¬ 
 sciousness, with all its moral elevation, which clung 
 to an outside view of evil or the association of evil 
 influence with certain aspects or animals of nature. 
 It would be strange, indeed, if there were not survi¬ 
 vals of the old Nature-worship of the Chaldean tribes, 
 out of which Abraham came, among his descendants. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SIN 73 
 
 All that it is necessary to say here is, that in the 
 narrative of the Fall, taken by itself, there is no 
 suggestion of a distinct Power of Evil—like that 
 which is found in Zoroastrianism—having a share 
 in man no less than the good power. Man is not 
 made evil because there is evil already without him, 
 from which he cannot escape. He is made evil be¬ 
 cause he yields from within to the gratification of 
 lawless desire externally excited. The object of 
 desire is before him. An evil voice whispers to him 
 that the evil is good, and the good evil. He listens, 
 yields, and falls under the voice of temptation and 
 the prompting of his own desire. But the very fact 
 of desire beyond the law is already sin, and without 
 this desire the evil would never have laid hold of 
 him. The essential evil does not, therefore, come 
 to him from without, but from within. Man makes 
 himself a sinner. 
 
 (£.) Not only so. Evil, as conceived by the Hebrew 
 religious consciousness, is not only from within, a re¬ 
 volt of the self-will from the divine will, but it is a 
 self-rejection of an order which is felt to be wise and 
 good. It is a fall from an ideal acknowledged to be 
 divine. “ But of the fruit of the tree which is in the 
 midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not 
 eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” This 
 is the acknowledgment of the woman. She has no 
 doubt of the divine order. It is the way at once of 
 
7 4 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 wisdom and of pleasantness. The voice of God 
 utters itself unmistakably in the heart; but the 
 desire of the eyes, the pleasantness of the outside, of 
 the tree fair and beautiful, and apparently “ good 
 for food,” prevails, and the sinful act is consummated. 
 Paradise is lost; the ideal approven by the higher 
 nature vanishes, never to be recalled. The know¬ 
 ledge of good and evil is indeed gained, but at a 
 price which brings with it only shame and confusion 
 of face. 
 
 Nothing can be further from the Biblical concep¬ 
 tion than any idea of evil entering into humanity as 
 a necessary factor in its development. The Fall is 
 truly a stumble—in no sense a step in advance. It 
 may be that compensation is to be found in it at 
 last, and that the knowledge of the evil as well as 
 the good was necessary to carry man forward beyond 
 the childlike naivete of the paradisiacal state, in 
 which he dwelt in harmony with the Divine above 
 him and nature around him. The world of human 
 intelligence, industry, and art, as we know it, may be 
 inconceivable in connection with the primitive man. 
 Evil may all along have been as necessary to its 
 development as good. The very idea of progress 
 may posit the evil as a necessary condition. This 
 may be all true : all we say is, that there is no 
 countenance given to such a view in the Biblical 
 picture. The suggestion of a higher knowledge as 
 
OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 the result of disobedience comes from the tempter. 
 It lies within the temptation itself as its most 
 powerful spring,—that the intellectual nature of the 
 man and woman were to be advanced by the act of 
 self-assertion ; and the fact of this advance is so far 
 acknowledged from the divine side.* Man is allowed 
 to have gained in intellect, and so far to have come 
 nearer the Divine (“like one of us”) by the know¬ 
 ledge of evil. But his intellectual gain is his moral 
 loss. The suggestion of the tempter is not the less 
 a lie because there happened in it to be a side of 
 truth. It was the bait of a richer being—of a higher 
 happiness—that he had held before the woman. 
 The bait was not altogether deceptive. The being 
 is enlarged by the mental experience of evil, but 
 it loses far more than it gains. It loses cheerful 
 communion with the Divine; it loses the sense 
 of self-approval; it is driven forth from Paradise. 
 Adam and Eve have grown at once to the con¬ 
 sciousness of manhood and womanhood—they are 
 no longer as children in a garden—but they are at 
 the same time ashamed of one another, and afraid 
 of God. In.short, they have fallen; they have lost a 
 sure position—they have gained an uncertain future. 
 The idea of a fall, of a distinct moral loss not to be 
 recovered, is carefully and completely preserved; and 
 whatever later theory may have made of a balance 
 
 Gen. iii. 2. 
 
j6 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 even of moral good in the origin of evil, there is 
 nothing to encourage such a theory in the early 
 picture. From the moral side—and this is the 
 essential side—the picture is dark throughout. 
 
 (< c .) All this is more clearly evident from the idea 
 of death associated with the picture. The divine 
 prohibition, as to the “ fruit of the tree in the midst 
 of the garden,” was, “Ye shall not eat of it, neither 
 shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” The suggestion of the 
 tempter was, “Ye shall not surely die;”* and, finally, 
 the man is driven from the garden, lest he “take also 
 of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.” t 
 Out of these well-known features of the story has 
 come the intimate association of death with the Fall 
 —an association frequently repeated in Scripture, 
 and which will come before us for special considera¬ 
 tion in the writings of St Paul. All that it is neces¬ 
 sary to say now is that, whatever more general in¬ 
 terpretation we may put upon these intimations, they 
 must be supposed chiefly to point to the moral loss 
 or injury involved in the act of disobedience. Death, 
 as a simple physical fact, is unaffected by moral con¬ 
 ditions. Its character may be greatly altered, and 
 no doubt has been greatly altered, by the fact of sin ; 
 but its incidence is natural, and lies in the consti¬ 
 tution of things. There is nothing in the passage 
 which makes us think otherwise. Death is intimated 
 
 Gen. iii. 3, 4. 
 
 t Gen. iii. 22. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SIN 77 
 
 as the hazard of disobedience, and the idea of per¬ 
 petuated existence is connected with the eating of 
 the tree of life. Theologians have pictured the glories 
 of an unfallen state, and the immortality of a sin¬ 
 less race ; but there is nothing in the Biblical text to 
 warrant such pictures. It is nowhere indicated that 
 man would have been immortal in Eden if he had 
 not sinned. Physical dissolution did not directly fol¬ 
 low the act of sin, and is not connected with it as im¬ 
 mediate cause and effect. What is really always con¬ 
 nected with sin is the destruction of the higher nature 
 or self, which loses strength and dies under the power 
 of evil when once accepted. In the very moment of 
 sin it receives this death into itself,* for it thereby 
 passes out of the condition of spiritual healthfulness, 
 and, in falling below the fulness of the divine life 
 which belongs to it, may be said to die. Sin is, 
 therefore, not only the loss of an ideal which man 
 might have enjoyed, but it is an element of death 
 working destruction in the fallen will which has 
 yielded to it, if not immediately, yet not the less 
 surely. This was the true loss or penalty incurred 
 by Adam; and here, as elsewhere, we are to look for 
 a spiritual and not a literal meaning in the narrative. 
 To do otherwise is merely to entangle ourselves in 
 hopeless difficulties. 
 
 2. Such are the main features of the Fall, and the 
 
 * “The soul that sinneth, it shall die”—Ezek. xviii. 4, 20. 
 
78 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 T 
 
 same moral features appear more or less plainly in 
 the expressions used to denote sin in the Old Testa¬ 
 ment. There is a considerable variety of such ex¬ 
 pressions, but it cannot be said that any clear ethical 
 progress is marked by their use. They occur, if not 
 indiscriminately, yet without marking any definite 
 advance from period to period of Hebrew thought. 
 Some, hotvever, are more general, and others more 
 particular; and it may be well to begin with the 
 more general, which at the same time are more fre¬ 
 quent in occurrence. 
 
 (a.) The most frequent and universal word for sin 
 in the Old Testament is chatath* from a verb 
 which originally signifies, exactly like its Greek 
 representative in the New Testament, to miss the 
 mark.-f It is used in its primary physical meaning 
 in the Book of Judges ,l where men are spoken of as 
 being each able to sling stones at an hair’s-breadth 
 “ and not miss.” Chatath is the term used in the 
 seventh verse of the fourth chapter of Genesis, where 
 the expression “ sin ” first occurs in our English ver¬ 
 sion, in reference to the sacrifice of Cain. Sometimes 
 in our version it is rendered more precisely faulty 
 sometimes trespass^ sometimes harm, IT and blame** 
 The idea conveyed in the expression is one of the 
 most rudimentary as well as comprehensive in 
 
 * riNtSn. *t 'AfiapTarcc. 
 
 § Gen. xli. 9 ; Exod. v. 16. 
 
 U Levit. v. 16. 
 
 t Judges, xx. 16. 
 
 || 1 Kings, viii. 31. 
 ** Gen. xliii. 9. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SIN. 79 
 
 relation to sin—the idea of failure. Whatever sin 
 may otherwise be, it is always failure ,—a departure 
 from the straight road—a missing of the point aimed 
 at, or which should have been aimed at. The idea 
 of right, and not merely of success, is implied as the 
 correlative of the expression. There is a right—an 
 aim which it is not merely an advantage to have 
 achieved, but which ought to be achieved. And to 
 miss this aim is not merely to fail in the sense of 
 deficiency, but it is to go out of the right way and 
 make a mistake. Man was made for the right, and 
 every departure from it is a departure from the 
 true purpose for which he was made. And this is 
 the fundamental and universal idea of sin conveyed 
 in Scripture. 
 
 ( b .) The expression avon * is commonly taken as 
 denoting the next most characteristic definition of 
 sin. The original meaning is crookedness, per¬ 
 versity, from a verb t “ to bend,” “ distort,” or 
 “ turn out of the right course.” The same rudi¬ 
 mentary idea, therefore, is so far conveyed here as 
 in the previous expression. As there is a right 
 mark or point to be aimed at, so there is always 
 a right line towards it. And sin is not only failure 
 as missing the mark, but perversity as taking a 
 wrong line. The divine life springing from its 
 fountain-head is not only the creative, but is 
 designed to be also the directive principle, both of 
 * iiy. t my. 
 
 1 T T T 
 
So 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 humanity and the world ; and sin arises whenever 
 the course of this life is turned aside and deflected. 
 There seems a deeper moral meaning, therefore, in 
 this expression—the idea not only of failure which 
 might arise from mere deficiency and lack of 
 strength, but of intentional wrongness. And, upon 
 the whole, the use of the expression bears out this 
 deeper meaning. It is the expression applied by 
 Cain to his own sin, when he has heard the curse pro¬ 
 nounced against him, and begins to realise its true 
 magnitude.* It is the word also used by Judah 
 when he and his brethren stand before Joseph 
 arraigned for having carried away his cup, which 
 had been found in Benjamin’s sack. “And Judah 
 said, What shall we speak ? or how shall we clear 
 ourselves ? God hath found out the iniquity of thy 
 servants.”*!* It is still more significantly used in 
 the Psalms—as, for example, in the thirty-second and 
 fifty-first Psalms, both of which are indeed store¬ 
 houses of all the main expressions denoting sin. 
 “ Blessed is he whose transgression ” ( pesha ) “ is 
 forgiven, whose sin ” ( chatctaJi ) “ is covered. Blessed 
 is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not 
 iniquity ” ( avon ). “ I acknowledged my sin ” 
 
 ( chattathi) “unto Thee, and mine iniquity” ( avoni) 
 “ have I not hid. I said, I will confess my trans¬ 
 gressions ” ( peshaai ) “ unto the Lord ; and Thou 
 * Gen. iv. 13. 
 
 *f* Gen. xliv. 16. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SIN 81 
 
 forgavest the iniquity of my sin” {avon chattathi ).* 
 Again : “ Wash me throughly from mine iniquity ” 
 (< avoni ), “ and cleanse me from my sin ” ( chattathi ). 
 “For I acknowledge my transgressions” ( peshaai ) : 
 “ and my sin ” ( chattathi ) “ is ever before me. Against 
 Thee, Thee only, have I sinned ” (the ordinary verb 
 chatoi), “ and done this evil ” ( ra ) “ in thy sight. . . . 
 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity ” (avon ) ; “ and in 
 sin ” (chet~ f*) “did my mother conceive me.” j 
 
 It is unnecessary to enter into further details, or 
 to press any additional force that may seem to be 
 in this expression. It would be too much to say 
 that it is always discriminated from the former word 
 by a precise shade of meaning—as, for example, in 
 the last words quoted from the Psalmist’s confession 
 of sin. We nowhere find in the language of moral 
 experience such precise adjustments of meaning—no 
 more in Hebrew or Greek than in our own language. 
 On the contrary, the expressions have a tendency to 
 pass into one another, and to become mixed in their 
 application, just as the words “ sin ” and “ iniquity ” 
 with us. The former, however, remains the more 
 general, the latter the more special expression. 
 And it is the same with the Hebrew equivalents. 
 
 * Psalm xxxii. I, 2, 5. 
 
 t SLDn. This simple form of the word occurs pretty frequently, and 
 the form occasionally. 
 
 I Psalm li. 2-5. 
 
 F 
 
82 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 The idea of wrongness in fact— failure , missing the 
 mark —and the idea of wrongness in intention— 
 injustice, iniquity —are the ideas respectively con¬ 
 veyed. And this reference to the will implied in 
 the last word gives it a deeper shade of meaning. It 
 brings out more prominently the moral character of 
 the act, and fixes it home upon the sinner. And 
 hence the word passes naturally into the idea of 
 “ guilt,” for which it is often used in the earlier 
 Scriptures; as in the expressions, “The iniquity” 
 or guilt “ of the Amorites is not yet full ; ” * “ Visit¬ 
 ing the iniquity ” or guilt “ of the fathers upon . . . 
 the third generation; ” f and again, in a passage 
 where we have, as in the passage quoted from the 
 Psalms, all the three expressions close together 
 “ Forgiving iniquity ” (guilt), and “ transgression, 
 and sin.” j 
 
 ( c .) There is another word, aven, § which is 
 very often translated in our version “ iniquity,” || but 
 which primarily means “ vanity ” and “ nothing- 
 ness.” 1 f As applied to our subject, it seems to 
 
 * Gen. xv. 16. Exod. xx. 5. 
 
 t riXLDrn Jiy—Exod. xxxiv. 7. § G*. 
 
 || No fewer than thirty-eight times, it is said. 
 
 IT As in such passages as Amos, v. 5, “And Bethel shall come to 
 nought; ” and Isaiah, xli. 29, “ Behold, they are all vanity ; their works 
 are nothing,”—the word is connected with from an unused root 
 
 implying the idea of negation. The term is translated in the 
 Septuagint, avo/ila, adiKia, and occasionally -irdvos, kottos. 
 
• OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SIN. 83 
 
 convey the idea of the unreality or nothingness of all 
 evil or opposition to the Divine. Powerful or suc¬ 
 cessful as it may seem for a time, it must prove in 
 the end unprofitable and vain. 
 
 (d.) But a more important word is that which we 
 have already found so often associated both with 
 chattath and avon —viz., pesha ,* which our translators 
 have generally rendered transgression , sometimes 
 trespass, -f* sometimes rebellmi. J These renderings 
 as nearly as possible convey the meaning of the 
 word, which seems always to imply as its back¬ 
 ground the idea of a divine law, which has been 
 broken or transgressed. There is here, therefore, 
 also a strongly personal or moral meaning. All 
 sorts of sins, acts of weakness, negligence, or care¬ 
 lessness, are implied in the primary expression 
 chattath ; but sins of design and violent purpose are 
 specially implied by pesha. There is no passage 
 brings this out more fully than the one in Job al¬ 
 ready indicated along with others—a passage which 
 is translated in our version, “ For he addeth rebel¬ 
 lion ” ( pesha) “ unto his sin ” ( chattatho). 
 
 (e.) In addition to these words, there are the gene¬ 
 ral expression ra, § denoting evil in all senses, physi- 
 
 * yCB — Septuagint, acrefieia, a§i/a'a, avofxia. 
 
 f Gen. xxxi. 36, 1 . 17; Exod. xxii. 9; 1 Sam. xxv. 28; Hosea, viii. I, 
 &c. 
 
 I 1 Kings, xii. 19 ; Job, xxxiv. 37. § J?”| 
 
S4 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 cal, ethical, and accidental,* and resJia; f* commonly 
 rendered wickedness, from a root to make a noise or 
 tumult. This term is supposed to express the dis¬ 
 position of evil—evil become a habit—or the quality 
 of unrighteousness, just as tzedek\ is the quality of 
 righteousness. 
 
 (f) There is still a further word which claims at¬ 
 tention before we close this analysis—viz., ashain,\ 
 generally translated in our version as trespass or 
 guilt, and carefully discriminated from chattath in its 
 application to the Mosaic sacrifices; the one denot¬ 
 ing the sin-offering, and the other the trespass-offer¬ 
 ing. Asham is derived from a root [askant) which 
 means to fail. , having for “ its primary idea negli¬ 
 gence, especially in going or gait ” (Gesen.) It 
 seems to have everywhere a more special meaning 
 than chattath , as indeed all the other words we have 
 been considering have. The specialty in this case 
 seems to point to definite acts of sin, violations of 
 law and commandment which have been brought 
 home to the offender or offenders—for example, in 
 the forty-second chapter of the Book of Genesis,|| 
 where we have one of the first and most typical 
 uses of the word. It is when the offence com¬ 
 mitted against Joseph flashes suddenly on the 
 
 * Levit. xxvii. io; Gen. viii. 21 ; Isa. iii. 11. 
 
 + yen. t pnv § aete 
 
 - ' vy t t 
 
 II Gen. xlii. 21. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SIN. 85 
 
 minds of his brethren, under the force of his de¬ 
 mand to bring Benjamin into Egypt, that they say 
 one to another, “We are verily guilty” (< ashemim ) 
 “ concerning our brother.” Frequently the word is 
 used in reference to public sins, as when the num¬ 
 bering of the people is spoken of in the First Book of 
 Chronicles* as a cause of trespass {askant) to Israel; 
 and still more frequently for sin, either ignorant or 
 wilful, against definite prohibitions of the law.^f* In 
 the sixty-ninth Psalm J it is used to denote particular 
 acts of sin : “ O God, Thou knowest my foolishness ; 
 and my sins are not hid from Thee.” 
 
 It is unnecessary to dwell further upon these 
 details,—the chief interest of which consists in the 
 various and dispersing light which they throw 
 around the idea of sin. All of them, from the 
 most general to the most particular, imply a moral 
 significance ; in other words, they connect the idea 
 of sin with a human personality—-some of them 
 more closely than others, but all of them more or 
 less. To “miss a mark,” “to deviate from the 
 straight road,” “ to break some rule or law,” all 
 involve definitely the action of an intelligent will, 
 which not only might have done otherwise, but 
 which ought to have done otherwise. In some cases 
 the mistake, deviation, or transgression may not 
 
 * 1 Chron. xxi. 3. 
 
 + Num. v. 6, 7; Levit. vi. 2-7. + Ps. Ixix. 5. 
 
86 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 have been of purpose, but rather the result of weak¬ 
 ness, negligence, or carelessness. But in no case is 
 it suggested that the sinful act was inevitable or 
 necessary, or, ■ in other words, that the evil coming 
 forth in human actions was beyond man’s control, 
 or a mere part of his nature wielded from without. 
 In most cases the act is expressly referred to the 
 free will or personality of the actor, and condemned 
 as such. A moral meaning in the act is therefore 
 everywhere asserted. 
 
 3. When we turn finally to view the subject 
 under the successive phases of the Old Testament 
 religion, this character of sin still more clearly 
 appears. It everywhere comes forth as an act of 
 the human will done against the divine will, or 
 some special institutions supposed to represent the 
 divine will. Sometimes the sinful act is more pro¬ 
 minently held forth in relation to God as Supreme 
 Creator and Governor, as Head of the world, and 
 the Lord and Sovereign of men. This is the per¬ 
 vading idea of Genesis. “ And the Lord said, My 
 spirit shall not always strive with man. . . . And 
 God saw that the wickedness” ( ra ) “of man was 
 great in the earth, and that every imagination of 
 the thoughts of his heart was only evil ” (ra) “ contin¬ 
 ually.”" In such statements as these, and generally 
 throughout the earlier portions of the divine Rev- 
 
 * Gen. vi. 3-5. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SIN. 87 
 
 elation, the conception of sin is more objective and 
 general. It is something wrong in the disposition or 
 state of man towards the Divine, something always 
 for which man is responsible. But there is no analy¬ 
 sis of the conception, beyond the fact that it is at 
 variance with the divine order. 
 
 As we advance beyond the simple imaginations of 
 the Patriarchal to the more elaborate culture of the 
 Mosaic times, the conception both deepens in moral 
 significance and acquires a more varied emphasis. 
 If we are allowed to bring into view the ample 
 machinery of the so-called Mosaic legislation, it is 
 needless to point out how greatly the idea of sin 
 must have become enlarged, or at least widened, in 
 the face of that legislation. The different orders of 
 sacrifice, and the minutiae of the ceremonial and 
 social laws of the Hebrews, all point to special kinds 
 of sin, called into vivid recognition by the theocratic 
 restrictions everywhere encompassing the chosen 
 people. An authoritative divine ritual touching the 
 national life at every point necessarily diffused a 
 widespread sense of obligation, which too frequently 
 remained unfulfilled. A danger, it is true, lay in this 
 very diffusion, illustrated by the Hebrew history as 
 by all sacerdotal history. The numerous Levitical 
 ordinances had a tendency to draw the sense of sin 
 towards the surface, and so far to empty it of moral 
 meaning—a result more or less seen in every species 
 
88 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 of sacerdotalism. When men are led to concentrate 
 religious attention upon external acts, they begin to 
 lose something of inward depth and spiritual reality ; 
 and religion often perishes in the very multitude of 
 religious forms. The history of the Jewish religion 
 is certainly no exception to this rule. 
 
 Should we not feel warranted in attributing all 
 the ceremonial and sacerdotal legislation of the Pen¬ 
 tateuch to the time of Moses, Mosaism yet remains 
 a great institution, powerful in moral influence. The 
 ten “words” or commandments which even the most 
 advanced criticism carries up to Moses, are in litera¬ 
 ture the most profound and comprehensive expression 
 of that great order which encompasses all moral life. 
 The moral law powerfully contributed to awaken the 
 inner sense of the Hebrew people, and deepen their 
 consciousness of sin. The Divine is presented in it 
 not merely as Sovereign and Lord—although this 
 is the opening key-note*—but as identified with 
 every aspect of order, truth, righteousness, and 
 purity in human life. A moral ideal not only invests 
 all life, but is carried up to Jahveh-Elohim as the 
 Source of this life and its highest Exemplar. It was 
 impossible to dwell in the light of such an ideal and 
 not to have had the spiritual sense quickened and 
 made sensitive, and the feeling of offence towards 
 
 * “I am the Lord thy God. . . . Thou shalt have no other gods 
 before me.”—Exod. xx. 2, 3. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SIN. 89 
 
 the Divine called forth in many ways hitherto little 
 understood or owned. This is what St Paul means 
 when he says that “ the law entered that the offence 
 might abound and again, that “without the law 
 sin was dead.”+ He is speaking of his own experi¬ 
 ence, or of the experience of a devout Jew in his 
 own time ; but the experience of the religious nature 
 is always so far the same—nay, the experience of 
 the individual is typical of the race. When the law 
 entered into the consciousness of Humanity, and was 
 added to the progressive force of divine Revelation, 
 the sense of sin was deepened alongside of it. Con¬ 
 science became alive in front of the divine command¬ 
 ment, and spiritual life was touched to its depths by 
 that sad undertone of sin which has never died out of it. 
 Through ages, the moral law has been the most 
 powerful moral factor of humanity, restraining its 
 chaotic tendencies, and binding it into harmonies of 
 domestic, social, and religious wellbeing. It has 
 lain not merely upon the human conscience, but 
 entered into the human heart as one of its most living 
 inward springs—bracing its weakness, rebuking its 
 laxity, holding before it an inflexible rule of moral 
 good. Words cannot measure the strength which 
 it has been to all the higher qualities of the race, 
 and the widespread moral education which it has 
 diffused—discriminating and purifying the ideas alike 
 
 * Rom. v. 20. 
 
 t Rom. vii. 8. 
 
90 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 of good and evil wherever it has prevailed, and 
 clothing life with a reality and depth of meaning 
 which it would never otherwise have possessed. 
 
 With the development of Hebrew thought in the 
 prophetic writings and the Psalms, all the special 
 characteristics of sin come out yet more prominently. 
 The prophetic order in its highest signification was 
 nothing else than a living witness for those eternal 
 principles of righteousness which previous Revelation 
 had implanted in the Hebrew race, and through them 
 in the life of Humanity. The prophets were the 
 preachers of that holy religion of Jahveh which, 
 beginning with Abraham, instituted by Moses, and 
 consolidated by David and Solomon, runs through 
 Hebrew history with all its vacillations and rever¬ 
 sions as a golden thread, making it a power of 
 spiritual elevation and blessing for the world. Con¬ 
 tinually, when the national consciousness of the 
 Divine sank or became perverted, it was revived, 
 reinforced, and once more turned in a right 
 direction. The reality of the divine government 
 under which Israel lived, of the exclusive claims of 
 the worship of Jahveh, and of the essential antago¬ 
 nism betwixt this worship and all deeds of sinful 
 disorder and impurity, was once more awakened and 
 brought into the clear light of national recognition. 
 This was the work of the prophets more than all 
 others. It was they who kept alive the moral 
 
OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 91 
 
 thoughtfulness of the chosen people. The priestly 
 sacrifices and ordinances, valuable as they were, 
 were apt, like all forms of ritual, to degenerate into 
 formalities. In themselves, they were not and could 
 not be sources of spiritual good—it was only the 
 divine feeling which lay behind their use which gave 
 them any religious value; and when this feeling 
 failed, they helped to choke it up and externalise it 
 rather than to call it forth afresh. The law was a 
 constant monition of divine duty ; but, as the fre¬ 
 quent lapses into idolatry prove, its very first word 
 was too often forgotten and powerless. Neither the 
 priestly nor the moral side of Mosaism, it may be 
 said, could have preserved in any purity the religious 
 thought of Hebraism, surrounded as it was by so 
 many depressing influences, to which it was continu¬ 
 ally yielding. It required a distinct force to renovate 
 and recruit it from time to time. And this it found 
 in prophecy, which for more than six hundred years 
 
 was its most powerful element of religious revival, 
 
 « 
 
 and remains to this day the most vital factor of 
 Hebrew literature.* 
 
 With this continual revival of divine consciousness 
 in the Hebrew people the consciousness of sin re¬ 
 vived, deepened, and became more real. It was felt 
 as an offence not merely against divine law or pre- . 
 cept, but against a Divine Person, a living One who 
 t * See Appendix XI. 
 
92 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 had claims upon the life of all His servants, and the 
 violation of whose commandments was disobedience 
 of His will. The prophet was always the messen¬ 
 ger of God. The word of God came unto him, and 
 he could not but utter it. He was not only the 
 preacher of the law and its righteous demands, but 
 he was the direct organ of the divine voice and will; 
 and through him the sense of a supreme personal 
 authority, whom it was sin to disobey, was brought 
 near to the Hebrew mind. There cannot be a better 
 illustration of this than the fifty-first Psalm, which 
 represents the results of the dealing of the prophet 
 Nathan with David in the matter of Bathsheba. An 
 act of definite transgression is not only brought home 
 to the conscience of the king, but conscience is quick¬ 
 ened throughout, and the divine presence made so 
 living to it that every other aspect of the king’s con¬ 
 duct disappears in the overwhelming sense that it was 
 sin—against the law, indeed, but above all against 
 the author of the law—against God Himself. “ For 
 I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is 
 ever before me. Against Thee, Thee only, have I 
 sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight; that Thou 
 mightest be justified when Thou speakest, and be 
 clear when Thou judgest. Behold, I was shapen in 
 iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” * 
 There is no more comprehensive or individual ex- 
 
 * Psalm li. 3-5. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SIN 93 
 
 pression of sin in all the Old Testament Scriptures. 
 It is a definite act of transgression or violation of 
 law; it is a consciousness of guilt ever before the 
 awakened soul; it is, more than all, a consciousness 
 of offence against God, who has given the law, and 
 who has endowed the soul with the capacity of 
 serving Him. Withal it is the outcome of an evil 
 nature. Sin is personal, and the sinner without 
 excuse. Yet its origin lies beyond the individual will. 
 It is an inheritance o'f nature which comes to us with 
 our birth. All these aspects of the subject are pre¬ 
 sented in the verses I have quoted, which occur 
 irresistibly to the student of Scripture in speaking of 
 it. There is no thought of definition. The different 
 sides of the subject are not put forward in any 
 systematic relation to one another. They come 
 forth only as the cries of a manifold experience 
 which knows and thinks of nothing but the burden 
 which it bears. And so the same experience repeats 
 itself—if not in the same comprehensive manner—in 
 many an utterance of Psalm and prophecy. Wher¬ 
 ever the voice of the prophet was heard sounding 
 the depth of the souls that he addressed, there was 
 the response of repentance and confession: “ I 
 acknowledge my transgression.” “Against Thee, 
 Thee only, have I sinned.” The fact of divine law 
 came near to the sinner; the fact of the divine pre¬ 
 sence overwhelmed him. The thought of God evoked 
 
94 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 the consciousness of sin, and drove it home upon the 
 sinner’s heart. 
 
 The same word of prophecy brought out more 
 distinctly than before the universality of sin, and 
 its persistence in the nation and the world. The 
 prophet was a preacher of righteousness to the 
 individual conscience. But he was even more a 
 national preacher and reformer. He put himself 
 forward as a public man, and dealt with all the 
 aspects of public life. He was, as has been said,* 
 “ a power in the nation,” and all the elements of 
 national life are graphically depicted in his pages. 
 It is impossible to peruse these pages without re¬ 
 cognising how pervading a presence evil is every¬ 
 where felt to be. It is a state and quality diffused 
 throughout the nation—a characteristic of humanity. 
 While originating in individual self-will, it is not 
 merely the result of will in every particular case, but 
 has so permeated the mass of human nature, that its 
 thoughts are evil, and only evil. This conception of the 
 pervasive influence of sin goes back, indeed, to the 
 very opening of Revelation, as shown in the words of 
 Genesis already quoted t regarding the Flood. It is 
 of the nature of sin to multiply and diffuse its power, 
 repeating itself by example and a degraded tone of 
 general feeling. And pervading as its influence, are 
 
 * J. S. Mill, Represent. Gov., 41—passage quoted in Appendix XI. 
 
 + Gen. vi. 5. See p. 86. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SIN. 95 
 
 its fatal consequences. Like a subtle poison, it not 
 only contaminates and injures the individual, but 
 the family, the tribe, the race. It kills wherever it 
 spreads. Its original penalty is an inherent penalty. 
 It works death by its own direct action, cutting off 
 the life of man from God—the only source of life— 
 and leaving behind only a perverted and self-destroy¬ 
 ing image of human-activity. 
 
 As a whole, we may sum up the doctrine of the 
 Old Testament as follows, gathering into one view 
 the results of our analysis :— 
 
 (1.) The Hebrew conception of evil is distinctively 
 moral. It is the disobedience of the human will 
 against the Divine expressed in the form of com¬ 
 mand, revelation, or law. In other words, it is what 
 we specially mean by sin. 
 
 (2.) It is not only a violation of divine law, but a 
 rejection of divine good. 
 
 (3.) All sin is in its nature destructive. It bears 
 death in it as its natural working or outcome. 
 
 (4.) It is not merely individual, but diffusive. 
 Having once entered into human nature, it becomes 
 a part of it, an hereditary taint, passing from gene¬ 
 ration to generation, often with accelerated force. 
 
 (5.) It is connected with a power or powers of evil 
 outside of man, the character and influence of which 
 are as yet but dimly revealed. 
 
 (6.) And to these several points of our summary 
 
96 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 we may add a further, which has been emphasised 
 by certain expositors of the religion of Israel. 
 Evil is also connected with the will of Jahveh as the 
 supreme source of all energy and all events. Facts 
 of evil (ra), no less than of good, are traced up¬ 
 wards to the Almighty Will, as the ultimate source 
 of all things.* This is true beyond all question; 
 but it exceeds the truth to say, as Kuenen does,*f* 
 that the older Israelitish prophets and historians 
 did not hesitate to derive even moral evil from 
 Jahveh. Precise distinctions of morality and con¬ 
 tingency were unfamiliar to the Hebrew mind ; and 
 at no time would this mind have shrunk from attri¬ 
 buting every form of evil accident (however imme¬ 
 diately caused by human wickedness) to the Sov¬ 
 ereign Power, which did as it willed in heaven and 
 on earth. But it is nevertheless true, as has been 
 clearly seen in the course of our exposition, that 
 the essential idea of evil in the Hebrew mind was 
 so far from associating itself with the Divine Will, 
 that its special note or characteristic was opposi¬ 
 tion to this Will. The line of later argument, as to 
 a possible relation of the Divine Will to sin (whereby 
 its omnipotence and yet its purity should be pre- 
 
 * “ I form the light, and create darkness ; I make peace, and create 
 evil: I the Lord” (Jahveh) “do all these things.”—Isaiah, xlv. 7. 
 “ Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord ” (Jahveh) “ hath not done 
 it?”—Amos, iii. 6. 
 
 + Religion of Israel, iii. 40. See Appendix XII. 
 
OLD TESLAMENT DOCTRINE OF SIN. 97 
 
 served), is foreign to the Old Testament. It grasps 
 events concretely; it does not analyse them in their 
 origin or nature; and so, while it hesitates not to 
 ascribe all evil as matter of fact, and as part of the 
 universal providence which governs the world, to the 
 Divine Will, it never fails to set forth sin as springing 
 out of the depths of human personality in opposition 
 to the Divine. This idea is stamped on every page 
 of the Old Testament, and no concrete figures of 
 prophetic rhetoric can be allowed to efface so clear 
 and deep an impression. 
 
 1 
 
 G 
 
98 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 IV. 
 
 DOCTRINE OF SIN AS CONTAINED IN 
 THE GOSPELS. 
 
 In passing to the Christian revelation and the doc¬ 
 trine of sin laid down in the New Testament Scrip¬ 
 tures, we carry with us the same moral atmosphere 
 as in the Old Testament. We are everywhere in the 
 same region of divine law and of personal responsi¬ 
 bility. Whatever Christianity may be more than 
 Mosaism and Judaism, it embraces at least all the 
 moral truth which they contained. The spiritual 
 consciousness of righteousness, and of sin as its 
 violation, which has accumulated in the long educa¬ 
 tion of the chosen people, is passed over in its full 
 import to the Christian Church, which, in spiritual 
 experience and organic development, is the direct 
 descendant of the Jewish Church. Much besides 
 enters from the first into Christianity,—a new power 
 of life from above—a new creative force; but it 
 loses nothing of the moral experience which has 
 been growing for ages in the Jewish race. It takes 
 
DOCTRINE OF SIN AS IN THE GOSPELS. 99 
 
 this all up, appropriates, enlarges, and purifies it. 
 In this respect conspicuously Christ came not “to 
 destroy, but to fulfil.” Upon this inherited experi¬ 
 ence of divine law, moral motive, and personal re¬ 
 sponsibility to a higher will, He took His stand 
 and began His work as a Teacher and a Saviour. 
 
 It is this organic connection betwixt the Old 
 and the New Testament, and the moral truths 
 which underlie both and make so much of their 
 substance, which compels the theologian to deal 
 with both spheres of Revelation, and seek for the 
 elucidation of Christian truth not only in the pages 
 of the New Testament, but in the pre-Christian 
 pages of the Old. All who ignore this connection 
 will be found to misconceive one or other of these 
 spheres, and to mistake the unity of the divine plan 
 for the education of our race. The connection will 
 be found to hold more or less in reference to all 
 Christian doctrines, even those which seem at first 
 most removed from the Hebrew consciousness; but 
 in the case of the doctrine with which we are dealing, 
 it holds in a special manner. The Christian doc¬ 
 trine of sin is at least all the doctrine which we 
 have found in the Old Testament. It may contain 
 —it does, as we shall find, contain—more than we 
 have drawn from the latter. There is new and 
 further and higher light thrown upon man’s moral 
 condition by the teaching of our Lord and of His 
 
100 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 apostles. But what we have already reached is also 
 found in their teaching, and forms everywhere its 
 basis, asserted or implied ; and hence the necessity 
 of our dwelling, as we did in a separate Lecture, on 
 the Old Testament view of sin. In doing so, we 
 were dealing not merely with necessary preliminary 
 matter, but we had already entered within that con¬ 
 tinuous line of thought and experience which issues 
 in the full Christian doctrine, and forms such an 
 essential part of it that without it the Christian 
 doctrine cannot be fully comprehended. 
 
 In the exposition of the fully-developed doctrine 
 of the New Testament Scriptures, there are at least 
 two main aspects in which we must consider it—viz., 
 first, as presented in our Lord’s teaching, as given in 
 the Gospels; and second, as elaborately set forth 
 and explained in the Epistles of St Paul. I am 
 quite aware that this is an inadequate division or 
 classification of the New Testament writings for 
 general dogmatic purposes. The type of doctrine 
 presented in the fourth Gospel is so separable from 
 that presented in the synoptics,—and the writings 
 of St John—the Gospel and the Epistles, I mean 
 —stand so obviously by themselves in a more ad¬ 
 vanced line of thought than all the other writings 
 of the Christian Scriptures,—that their dogmatic 
 meaning demands almost always separate treatment. 
 There may be said to be at least the three following 
 
DOCTRINE OF SIN AS IN THE GOSPELS. 101 
 
 types of thought in the New Testament : (i) The 
 Judaeo-Christian, represented by the first two syn¬ 
 optics, the Epistle of James, and, less definitely, the 
 Epistles of St Peter and Jude ; (2) the Pauline, 
 represented, in addition to the Epistles of the great 
 apostle, by the Gospel of St Luke and the Acts of 
 the Apostles ; and (3) the Johannean, represented 
 by the fourth Gospel and the three Epistles of St 
 John. There are few dogmas of the Christian 
 system upon which this last group, or the writings of 
 St John, have not a distinctive bearing, or a bearing 
 so special as to demand special notice. But as re¬ 
 gards the present subject, this cannot be said to be 
 the case, for the simple reason that the experience of 
 sin was a common inheritance in all the sections of 
 the infant Church. It was nothing new—something, 
 indeed, very old—which they knew as Jews, no less 
 than as Christians. There was nothing, therefore, 
 to make the sin - consciousness different in the 
 different apostles, or to make their mode of repre¬ 
 senting our Lord’s teaching regarding it marked by 
 more than casual diversity. Upon the whole, it is 
 essentially the same picture in this respect that we 
 have in all the four Gospels. There may be 
 distinctions to be noticed, but these distinctions do 
 not affect the substance of the representation. We 
 are warranted, therefore, in taking together all that 
 the Gospels have to say regarding sin; or in viewing 
 
 I 
 
 y/v, ty* 
 JLU 
 
 
102 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 our Lord’s teaching on this subject in all the four 
 as one complete picture. The doctrine of St Paul 
 deserves separate treatment, not as being differ¬ 
 ent from that of the Gospels, but as being so ex¬ 
 panded and elaborate that it can only be handled 
 adequately by itself. The great apostle, in consist¬ 
 ency with his deeper experience and more varied 
 culture, dwells specially, and at length, upon the 
 subject, and in a critical and explanatory manner 
 quite different from that of the Gospels. He enters 
 not only into an analysis of the fact, but into what 
 may be called its philosophy, and so sets forth 
 a comprehensive doctrine, which has powerfully 
 moulded the thought of the Church in all subsequent 
 ages. Our remaining Lectures will be fully occupied 
 in the consideration of this doctrine. 
 
 In approaching the present aspect of our subject, 
 we are met at the outset not only with the accu¬ 
 mulated moral experience derived from the Old 
 Testament, but, moreover, with a new or at least 
 more clearly developed background of evil. In 
 the Old Testament, evil appears mainly as an in¬ 
 ward or subjective conception. The primal sin, 
 although prompted by evil influence from without, 
 is conspicuously inward and moral; everywhere it 
 is the thoughts of men’s hearts or the motions of 
 their will, that are evil and obnoxious to God. It 
 is strange how little is seen of any evil Power out- 
 
DOCTRINE OF SIN AS IN THE GOSPELS. 103 
 
 side the human will, or any background of a king¬ 
 dom of evil moving men from without. The con¬ 
 nection of Satan, or the evil Power, with the serpent in 
 the Garden of Eden, is an inference of later dogmatic 
 opinion, arising naturally out of the circumstances 
 and the expressions which are afterwards used in the 
 New Testament regarding “ that old serpent, which 
 is the Devil, and Satan * but not only is there no 
 mention of Satan in the narrative of the Fall, but 
 the name does not occur in all the Pentateuch, or 
 any of the earlier Hebrew Scriptures. The expres¬ 
 sion is, at the most, only used as a proper name 
 five times in the Old Testament—viz., first in the 
 opening of the twenty-first chapter of the First Book 
 of Chronicles; *f* in three well-known places in Job,* 
 and in the prophecy of Zechariah, in the opening of 
 the third chapter, where Joshua the high priest is 
 represented as “standing before the angel of the 
 Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist 
 him.” In all the other places in which the word 
 occurs, it is used in its simple meaning of “ adver¬ 
 sary,” a sense in which it is also used in the Gospels. § 
 
 Even the most expressive of these Old Testament 
 
 * Rev. xx. 2. 
 
 + “ And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to 
 number Israel.” The expression is here used without the article, and 
 may be translated, as elsewhere, simply as “ adversary.” 
 
 + Job, i. 6, 12 ; ii. 1. 
 
 § Matt. xvi. 23, where our Lord addresses St Peter, “Get thee 
 behind me, Satan,’’ or adversary. 
 
104 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 passages gives us no definite idea of a spiritual Power 
 of evil outside of man, and subjecting man to his 
 control. In the prologue of the Book of Job, Satan 
 is represented, with sufficient clearness, as a dis¬ 
 tinct being or personal existence. But the picture 
 of his character and of his employment is neither 
 imposing nor spiritual. He is not a grand or impres¬ 
 sive figure. He comes among the “sons of God ” to 
 present himself before the Lord. He is the image 
 of restlessness, of malice, and of envy—the willing 
 envoy of inflicting mischief upon Job; but he has 
 no semblance of the “ Archangel ruined,” nor does 
 he assail the patriarch with spiritual weapons. No 
 power of spiritual injury is ascribed to him. He is a 
 delegated Agent in the hands of God, sent forth by 
 Him to execute His purposes ; and the powerwhich he 
 exercises is only a power over outward circumstances. 
 
 So soon as we come within the sphere of New 
 Testament Revelation, a very different picture is pre¬ 
 sented to us. From the first there is here depicted 
 a clear and powerful background of evil—a kingdom 
 of evil spirits or “ demons,” with a prince or ruler at 
 their head, designated by various names, as “ the 
 Devil,” “the Tempter,”* “ Satan,”f “ Beelzebub,” + 
 
 * Matt. iv. i, 5, 8, II; xiii. 39 : “Tempter,” Matt. iv. 3 ; Luke, 
 iv. 2, 3, 5, 6, 13 ; John, viii. 44. 
 
 + Matt. iv. 10; xii. 26; Mark, i. 13 ; iii. 23, 26; iv. 15 ; Luke, 
 iv. 8. 
 
 X Matt. xii. 24 ; Mark, iii. 22. 
 
DOCTRINE OF SIN AS IN THE GOSPELS . 105 
 
 “ the Prince of Devils,” * “ the Strong One,”*f* 
 “the Wicked One,” J “the Enemy,” or “the Hostile 
 One.Ӥ The first three epithets are all used in what 
 may be called the primitive account of our Lord’s 
 temptation, in the fourth chapter of St Matthew’s Gos¬ 
 pel ; and throughout the Gospels the words “Satan,” 
 “the Devil,” “the Wicked One,” “Beelzebub,” “the 
 Prince of Devils ” (or, as the translation ought to have 
 been here, as elsewhere, “ Demons ”), are used inter¬ 
 changeably. There can be no question, therefore, 
 of the recognition in the Gospels of an active Power 
 or Principle of evil outside of man, and exercising 
 influence over him. It may be said that our Lord 
 nowhere makes known the existence of such an 
 evil Power as a point of doctrine. He assumes 
 the current belief among the Jews of His time, 
 rather than sets forth any new doctrine on the sub¬ 
 ject. This is true. But it is equally true that He 
 clearly assumes the reality of such a Power; and 
 both in His intercourse with His disciples and in His 
 arguments with His opponents, uses language, the 
 natural meaning of which places the reality of a 
 kingdom of evil beyond dispute. 
 
 With any further questions pertaining to the 
 character of this kingdom, the personality of its 
 head and subordinate members, their origin, their 
 
 * Matt. xii. 24. 
 J Matt. xiii. 38. 
 
 Matt. xii. 29. 
 § Matt. xiii. 39. 
 
106 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 agency, and mode of influence, we are not now con¬ 
 cerned. These questions do not enter essentially 
 into the consideration of our subject. It was neces¬ 
 sary to bring so much into view, if for no other pur¬ 
 pose than to show the somewhat different atmos¬ 
 phere as to the general question of evil which meets 
 us in the New Testament. What at the utmost can 
 only be considered suggestions in the Old Testament, 
 stand forth as clear intimations in the Christian 
 Revelation. Evil is here before us from the first, 
 and prominently, not merely as a characteristic 
 of humanity and the moral atmosphere in which 
 humanity moves, but as a supernatural element 
 of affecting the world and man from the outside. 
 Temptation is no longer merely a reality, addressing 
 man’s sense or soliciting man’s will—that lies in its 
 nature always—but it is a living Power, the repre¬ 
 sentative of a kingdom hostile to the Divine, and 
 hostile to man as the offspring of the Divine. All 
 this may be equally true from the beginning, and 
 may, as our dogmatic systems suppose, be the only 
 adequate explanation of the primary sin and fall of 
 man. But the fact is not made clear in the Old 
 Testament by itself—is not made to fix our attention 
 as in the New. Here only it is we meet in full the 
 idea of a Power of evil fronting the Divine in impla¬ 
 cable hostility, and encompassing man as his ever- 
 active enemy and tempter. 
 
DOCTRINE OF SIN AS IN THE GOSPELS. 107 
 
 It is important, at the same time, to notice how 
 the idea of such a Power in the New Testament, 
 however it may be designated or described, is dis¬ 
 criminated from the evil Principle of the Persian 
 religion to which we formerly adverted, and with 
 which it has by certain writers been confounded, or 
 at least brought into comparison. Some have not 
 hesitated to trace the origin of the New Testament 
 conception to the intercourse of the Jews with the 
 Persians, and the influence naturally exercised upon 
 them by Persian modes of thought. It is difficult 
 to say whether the Jewish mind did not receive 
 some impulse towards the whole subject of Angel- 
 ology, and especially the existence of evil spirits, 
 from their Persian neighbours, or the general stream 
 of thought regarding the Supernatural which was 
 filtrating from this quarter into the religious mind 
 of the time. As with other curious questions 
 lying alongside of our subject, we do not venture 
 to enter upon this, and the less reluctantly that 
 nothing definite or satisfactory can be said regard¬ 
 ing it. This, however, is plainly evident, that the 
 Jewish conception of Satan is greatly distinguished 
 from the Zoroastrian conception of Ahriman (Anra- 
 Mainyus). The latter is a twin spirit with Ormuzd 
 (Ahura-Mazda), the good Power—apparently co¬ 
 equal, and no less concerned than the good in 
 the production of the world. The warfare of the 
 
108 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 two is a warfare as of balanced forces. The world 
 and human nature are conceived as arising out of 
 their joint action or conflict. On the contrary, 
 Satan is represented everywhere in the New Testa¬ 
 ment as indeed the enemy of God, yet subordinate 
 and inferior to Him. His power is a real power ; it 
 is a power of dread and danger, capable of assailing 
 Jesus himself, “the Holy One and the Just:” yet 
 it is always limited and subordinate to a higher 
 divine purpose.* Above all, it has no control of 
 man, save through his own yielding. Evil, in short, 
 even as impersonated in Satan, can only get near 
 to man along the line of his own will. The Evil 
 has no creative or original share in him. Satan 
 is not, like Anra-Mainyus, concerned in his being 
 from the first; and no part of his being, material or 
 spiritual, is essentially evil, or a necessary prey to 
 evil influence. The idea of matter as in itself evil, 
 or the hopeless sphere of evil, underlies not only the 
 Persian mythology, but all the numerous modes of 
 thought so rife in the first ages of the Church, which 
 have more or less affinity to it. There is not a trace 
 of this in the Gospels. The Powers of evil, with 
 Satan at their head, are everywhere conceived as 
 moral Powers—Powers lying outside of the material 
 cosmos, and while working through it, in no sense 
 embedded within it or identified with it. The essen- 
 
 * Matt. iv. i ; Rev. xii. 12, xv. 2. 
 
DOCTRINE OF SIN AS IN THE GOSPELS. 109 
 
 tial morality of the evangelical conception separates 
 it, therefore, entirely from the Persian, and places it 
 on a higher level. 
 
 This point is all the more significant, that the 
 Persian conception of matter as hopelessly corrupt, 
 and itself the evil, had beyond doubt extended itself, 
 in the time of our Lord, within the sphere of Juda¬ 
 ism, and formed a characteristic tenet of one of its 
 three prominent sects. The Essenes were not only 
 ascetics, separated from both Pharisees and Saddu- 
 cees by certain practical observances regarding food 
 and marriage, and other social restrictions, but, as 
 recent investigation has clearly shown,* were also 
 Gnostics, animated in their ascetical rigidities by 
 the speculative principle of the abhorrence of matter 
 as the abode of evil. This idea, therefore, like many 
 others, was in the intellectual atmosphere of the 
 time ; and if certain modern views of the origin of 
 Christianity were true, it would almost certainly 
 have been found in the Gospels. Yet, as we have 
 said, there is not a trace of it there. The taint of 
 Nature-religion is entirely absent, even where the 
 thought of the Gospels comes directly into contact 
 with the thought of the age, circulating from Aryan 
 no less than Semitic sources. It does not cling 
 even to the skirts of the evangelical doctrine. The 
 
 * See quotation in Appendix XIII. from Dr Lightfoot’s interesting 
 chapter on this subject in his recent Commentary on the Colossians. 
 
IIO 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 conception of Satan, like every other element of 
 revealed religion, is a moral and not a natural con¬ 
 ception, having all its true life and influence within 
 the higher sphere. 
 
 And this also it is which renders it unnecessary 
 that we should dwell further upon the background 
 of evil brought out so prominently in the Gospels 
 and throughout the New Testament Scriptures. 
 Whatever conclusions we may form as to its 
 character and influence, cannot affect the special 
 truths which sum up the Christian doctrine of 
 sin. Whatever be the Power or Powers of evil 
 outside of man recognised in the New Testa¬ 
 ment, sin remains in its contents essentially the 
 same. The hidden Powers of evil supposed to en¬ 
 compass man can only assail him from within. 
 Their influence is spiritual, and is only operative 
 within the free spiritual life which belongs to every 
 man. This is the constant representation of the 
 New Testament. There is no element of necessity 
 
 or constraint in the picture of diabolic influence; or, 
 
 \ 
 
 if there is, by the very same fact, the idea of sin dis¬ 
 appears, and that of mere misfortune or calamity 
 emerges. In short, whatever be its accidents, sin is 
 seen as clearly as ever—and, indeed, more clearly 
 than ever—to be rooted in the personal will of man, 
 —the product of his own self-determining agency. 
 It appears, if not more plainly, yet more fully, as 
 
DOCTRINE OF SIN AS IN THE GOSPELS. 11 1 
 
 the wilful transgression of law which is divine, not 
 merely by imposition, but by intuition. God Him¬ 
 self is brought more close to the individual conscience 
 as Authority and Lawgiver, but also, and especially, 
 as Father,—a living Spirit of Love, whose will is at 
 once man’s law and man’s good. 
 
 i. In the representation of sin given by our Lord 
 in the Gospels, the first point that claims attention is 
 the manner in which He intensifies the Old Testa¬ 
 ment idea of it, as deviation from or transgression of 
 law. The expressions used to describe sin are the 
 direct equivalents in Greek of the Hebrew expres¬ 
 sions noticed in last Lecture. The most general ex¬ 
 pression conveys the same idea of failure or missing 
 a mark as the Hebrew expression chattath formerly 
 discussed.* This is the expression used in the case 
 
 * 'Apaprla, failure (its original etymology is uncertain), stands for sin 
 in general in the New Testament, as nRtSIl in the Old Testament; 
 and, associated with this general expression, there is a “mournfully 
 numerous group ” of words analogous to the Old Testament group 
 formerly considered, and expressing more or less the same definite 
 shades of meaning. It is unnecessary to add any critical discussion 
 of these words beyond that given in the text. The three there 
 mentioned—viz., apaprla, kvopla, •napaiTTupa — are all used by our 
 Lord,—the first, however, by far the most frequently. (' ApapT-ppa 
 is found in Mark, iii. 28, and doubtfully in Mark iv. 12.) 
 ’A vogia is used with great significance in the First Epistle of St 
 John, iii. 4, in conjunction with apapria : nfis <5 iroi&v tjJv apapriav 
 Kal tV avoplav iroie7‘ Kal tj apapria icrrlv r) avopia — “Whosoever 
 committeth sin transgresseth also the law : for sin is the trans¬ 
 gression of the law.” Uapairrcapa is often employed by St Paul; 
 Rom. v. 15, 16, 17, 18, 20; Eph. ii. 1; Gal. vi. 1. Expressions 
 specially Pauline are irapaKor\ (“disobedience to a voice”), opposed to 
 
112 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 of the “ man sick of the palsy,” whom our Lord 
 cures in the opening of His ministry: “ Son, be of 
 good cheer; thy sins * be forgiven thee.” Again, in 
 the well-known passage, “ Wherefore I say unto 
 you, Every sin*f* and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto 
 men ; but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost 
 shall not be forgiven unto men.” Again, very ex¬ 
 pressively, “ Whosoever committeth sin is the ser¬ 
 vant of sin;”:}; and, “And when He is come, He 
 will reprove the world of sin.” § The expression 
 rendered by our translators “ iniquity,” and which 
 more precisely means negation or violation of 
 law, is also used in St Matthew, both with and 
 without the article—as, for example, in the fol¬ 
 lowing passages : “ Depart from me, ye that work 
 iniquity ; ” “ They ” (the angels) “ shall gather out 
 of His kingdom all things that offend, and them 
 
 viraKo-fi (Rom. v. 19 ; 2 Cor. x. 6; Heb. ii. 2); irapa^aais (“trans¬ 
 gression”) very frequently (Rom. ii. 23, v. 14 ; I Tim. ii. 14; Heb. 
 ii. 2—in conjunction with irapaKoi], Heb. ix. 15). Readers anxious to 
 study the several shades of meaning which have been associated with 
 these words may be referred to Archbishop Trench’s volume on New 
 Testament Synonyms, second part, p. 61, 73. It is evident, from the 
 interesting discussion and quotation of authorities there given, that too 
 much is not to be made of these shades of meaning, and that the full 
 force of the evangelical and Pauline thought on the subject is better 
 gathered by a comprehensive induction of the leading particulars of this 
 thought, such as is attempted in the Lectures, than by any mere critical 
 analysis of words. 
 
 * 'Apa pTiai —Matt. ix. 2, 5. 
 
 + Tlatra apaprla, “ all manner of sin”—Matt. xii. 31. 
 
 + TV apapriav . . . tt)s apaprias — John, viii. 34. 
 
 § Ilepl apaprias —John, xvi. 8. 
 
DOCTRINE OF SIN AS IN THE GOSPELS. 113 
 
 which do iniquity.”* The Pharisees are said to 
 be “full of hypocrisy and iniquity.”-}* The original Kv 
 of the familiar word trespasses, X so associated with — 
 the Lord’s Prayer, deserves also to be mentioned 
 in connection with the Gospels. The expression, 
 however, does not occur in the Lord’s Prayer itself, 
 either in St Matthew or St Luke, but in the signifi¬ 
 cant verses immediately following the prayer in St 
 Matthew’s Gospel,§ and the corresponding passage 
 in St Mark.|| The expression used in the Lord’s 
 Prayer in the first Gospel is peculiar, and marks 
 a peculiar shade of meaning—viz., “debts; ”11 the 
 idea being that sins are chargeable against us as 
 debts are, and that, if not forgiven, they must be 
 paid in full. The language of the prayer as given 
 in the Gospel of St Luke, less frequently used than 
 other forms of it, brings out the close connection 
 betwixt sins designated by the ordinary expression 
 and the idea of indebtedness: “ And forgive us our 
 sins, for we also forgive every one that is indebted 
 to us.”** 
 
 Such is the general description of sin in the Gospels, 
 answering nearly to what we have already found in 
 
 * Matt. vii. 23, xiii. 41. 
 
 + Matt, xxiii. 28, avofxla. In the first two passages quoted in the 
 text, the expression occurs with the article, tV avojxiav —in the third, 
 it occurs without the article. 
 
 X TIa.p 6 TTTwiJ.a. § Matt. vi. 14, 15. || Mark, xi. 25, 26. 
 
 H ’Ocpei\Tifj.aTa. ** Luke, xi. 4, a/xaprlas . . . ttolvtI o<psl\ovTi rjp.7u. 
 
 H 
 
114 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 the Old Testament. But a mere enumeration of 
 words and their specific meanings gives but a poor 
 account of the deeper meaning which our Lord’s 
 teaching throws into the subject. It is only when 
 we bring into view this higher conception of the 
 standard or law which marks failure, deviation, or 
 transgression, that we see how far more penetrating 
 is His conception of sin, even as a breach of law. 
 
 The law was not to Him, as it had become to 
 the ordinary Jewish mind of whatever school — a 
 mere letter of commands or of prohibitions : “ Honour 
 thy father and thy mother;” “Thou shalt not kill;” 
 “Thou shalt not commit adultery;” “Thou shalt 
 not forswear thyself.” He did not disparage its 
 literal meaning; but its true meaning was far 
 deeper than the letter. The law was for Him a 
 spiritual ideal, “ quick and powerful,” like the word 
 of God in the Epistle to the Hebrews,* “and sharper 
 than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the 
 dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints 
 and marrow,”—“ a discerner of the thoughts and in¬ 
 tents of the heart.” It is not enough that men keep 
 within the letter, and in its sense do no violence or 
 commit no impurity ; but men are no less trans¬ 
 gressors if they cherish angry feelings against a 
 brother, or look on a woman to lust after her. The 
 law, so far from being destroyed, is glorified and ful- 
 
 * Heb. iv. 12. 
 
DOCTRINE OF SIN AS IN THE GOSPELS. 11 5 
 
 filled in His teaching; and sin, or its violation,stands 
 forth not merely as an outward act, but as an inward 
 thought or inclination. The principle of law being thus 
 spiritualised, the principle of its negation is equally 
 spiritualised. The conditions of righteousness and 
 purity binding our being are no mere external con- 
 ditions, restraining the outward activities, but con¬ 
 ditions of the soul—necessary and absolute forms of 
 its life—within which its most secret movements, no 
 less than its outward manifestations, must circulate. 
 Whatever be the origin of our ideas of law and right 
 —whether they come to us from without or within 
 —our Lord does not meddle with such questions; 
 they exist. They are summarily comprehended in 
 the Ten Commandments. But not only so; the law 
 is nigh to us—in our heart. It binds our innermost 
 being no less than our external conduct. It extends 
 absolutely over every sphere of our voluntary activity. 
 The ancient words only mirror an ideal right that 
 lives in every conscience not “ dead in sin ; ” and sin 
 begins not only when the letter of the law is broken, 
 but when the ideal is obscured within and the heart 
 has sunk deliberately below its own highest concep¬ 
 tion of right. 
 
 2. But not merely is the conception of law, and 
 of sin as its violation, thus idealised and extended 
 in our Lord’s teaching ; the conception of God as the 
 giver of the law, and hence of sin as personal dis- 
 
Il6 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 obedience against its Author, is at the same time 
 more clearly brought out. The Divine is not only an 
 external authority commanding us, but a living Will 
 that claims our service. We are to keep the com¬ 
 mandments, not merely because it is right for us to 
 do so, because the law is a categorical imperative 
 within us which will not let us do as we will, but, 
 above all, because it is God Himself that is ruling us 
 by His law. His is the voice which speaks in the 
 ancient words, and in the response which our hearts 
 make to the words. He is Himself the immediate 
 object of all moral obligation. We are to obey Him, 
 not merely because His commands lie upon us, but 
 because He is the Author and Father of our being, 
 in whom alone we live and move—whose we are, and 
 to whom we owe all. And our sin is consequently 
 not merely “ transgression of law,” but disobedience 
 against Him—rejection of His will. 
 
 This essential aspect of sin as involving offence 
 against a living Will no less than deviation from 
 a right rule, is abundantly present in the Old 
 Testament, and especially in the prophetic writings 
 and the Psalms. It was inseparably involved in 
 the whole character of Hebraism as a theocracy 
 —a system which clothed itself in the form of 
 law, but of which God was everywhere the imme¬ 
 diate centre. It was nothing new, therefore, to 
 the Hebrew consciousness. This has been clearly 
 
DOCTRINE OF SIN AS IN THE GOSPELS. II7 
 
 seen already. A Jew could hardly ever, amidst all 
 the traditions of Pharisaism, lose sight of the relation 
 of his sin to God as well as to the law. But the 
 experience is everywhere requickened in our Lord’s 
 teaching; and all who heard Him were made to feel 
 that their conduct had not merely a legal but a 
 personal bearing. There was One ever with them, 
 seeing them not only as their fellow-men saw them, 
 but seeing them in secret; * knowing what they had 
 need of before they asked Him,f their “ Father in 
 heaven ; ”—and all that they thought and did was 
 judged by Him with unerring judgment. All their 
 evil, therefore, was sin against Him. It was a rejec¬ 
 tion of His will as well as an offence against His au¬ 
 thority. It was not only disorder, but undutifulness. 
 
 3. And this leads us to a higher element of our 
 Lord’s teaching than we have yet reached. The 
 law is not only idealised, and the conception of the 
 divine personality everywhere made prominent, but 
 there is a clearer, if not a wholly new, revelation 
 made of the Divine. The Supreme Being is not 
 merely moral order centred in a personal will, but 
 moral perfection. The Right that rules our lives is 
 at the same time the Love that guides them. God 
 is our Father in heaven, all whose will towards us is 
 good. This is one of the highest notes of spiritual 
 advance in the Gospels—the clear identification of 
 * Matt. vi. 4, 6. t Matt. vi. 8. 
 
118 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 righteousness and goodness, of law and of love. These 
 two ideas, so apt to be separated—so frequently, in 
 point of fact, separated in popular religion—are every¬ 
 where identical in Christ, and in the higher spiritual 
 sphere revealed by Him. The God of whom He 
 speaks is not only supreme, but supremely good. 
 “ He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the 
 good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.” * 
 “ If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts 
 unto your children, how much more shall your 
 Father which is in heaven give good things to them 
 that ask Him !” f The idea of goodness is specially 
 the idea of God. And yet divine goodness is never 
 represented as good-nature, or mere complacency. 
 On the contrary, it is inseparably bound up with 
 righteousness and truth. A love without justice 
 would prove to be no love at all. A goodness with¬ 
 out holiness would be a mere shadow, on which no 
 true heart could rest. Love is the innermost prin¬ 
 ciple of the Divine, but the Divine is always the 
 Right. Goodness without morality is unintelligible 
 in the spiritual sphere. Within this sphere they are 
 not only inseparable, they are essentially coherent 
 —twin aspects of the same spiritual perfection. 
 Right is Love, however it may sometimes seem dis¬ 
 guised in the face of wrong ; and Love, on the other 
 hand, embraces every essential principle of morality. 
 
 * Matt. v. 45. t Matt. vii. 11. 
 
DOCTRINE OF SIN AS IN THE GOSPELS. 119 
 
 Hence the Divine is all summed up in Love. It is 
 the secret of moral order in heaven and on earth. 
 It is the name for the highest, alike in God and in 
 man—the complete expression for the law above 
 us, and the complete expression for the law within 
 us. “ God is love.” * “ Love is the fulfilling of the 
 
 law.” *f* When the Pharisees were gathered together, 
 one of them, a lawyer, “ asked Him a question, 
 tempting Him, and saying, Master, which is the 
 great commandment in the law ? Jesus said unto 
 him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 
 This is the first and great commandment. And the 
 second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour 
 as thyself. On these two commandments hang all 
 the law and the prophets.” \ As love in God is the 
 sum of moral perfection, love in us towards God and 
 towards our neighbour is the sum of all moral duty. 
 
 This higher teaching of Christ reflects everywhere 
 a deeper shadow on human sin. If divine righteous¬ 
 ness be always divine goodness, and the law, even 
 in its most restrictive aspects, be only a form of 
 concealed love working for our good, the wilful 
 violation of law and of right is at the same time 
 enmity against the Good. This thought is fre¬ 
 quently repeated in the Gospels. In the profound 
 and beautiful parable of the prodigal son—which is 
 
 * 1 John, iv. 8. + Rom. xiii. 10. + Matt. xxii. 35-40. 
 
120 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 throughout full of meaning for our subject—it is 
 specially apparent. It is the deepest offence of the 
 prodigal, not that he had yielded to the lawless 
 impulses of self-indulgence—wasted his substance in 
 riotous living, and broken the laws of temperance 
 and purity—nor even that he has sinned against a 
 parental authority which claimed his obedience; but 
 that, as his own heart at length tells him, he has 
 done despite to a father’s love, and offended against 
 a goodness which was following him solicitously 
 amid all his wilful degradation, and waiting all along 
 to welcome his return.* Again, in the solemn pas¬ 
 sage*}* about blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, 
 'where our Lord is contending with pathetic indigna¬ 
 tion against the darkness of Pharisaic unbelief, it is 
 this thought that marks the depth of His pathos, and 
 gives meaning to His awful warning: the Pharisees 
 were offenders not merely against Himself but against 
 the full lustre of goodness—the light of the Divine— 
 the presence of the Holy Ghost seen in His works. 
 There might have been excuses for their not appre¬ 
 hending or acknowledging Him as the Messiah on 
 His own appeal; but His works spoke for them¬ 
 selves as works of divine healing and beneficence. 
 The spirit of Goodness—of God—breathed in them, 
 and yet they said they were the works of Beelzebub, 
 the prince of devils. The light that was in them 
 * Luke, xv. 11-32. + Matt. xii. 31, 32. 
 
DOCTRINE OF SIN AS IN THE GOSPELS. 121 
 
 being darkness, how great was their darkness ! The 
 deepest element of their sin was this hatred of the 
 good. This was their blasphemy against the Holy 
 Ghost. All other sin may be forgiven ; but a dispo¬ 
 sition which calls evil good, and good evil—darkness 
 light, and light darkness—is unforgivable in its na¬ 
 ture. It is hopeless—beyond the operation of divine 
 grace. And so the darkness of sin deepens as the 
 light of God falls upon it. The shadows are cast 
 more gloomily into the abysses of human self-will 
 and alienation from the Divine, as the ideal of Love 
 rises more luminously in the spiritual heavens. 
 
 The same aspect of our Lord’s teaching serves to 
 bring out more plainly the essential nature of sin. 
 As love, or the going forth of the human will in 
 harmony towards the Divine, is the highest expres¬ 
 sion of moral duty, so the opposite of all this, or the 
 concentration of the will upon itself in opposition to 
 the Divine, is the uttermost expression of sin. More 
 than anything else, the essence of sin is to be found 
 in concentrated self-will or perverted egoism. In 
 such a case the will is not merely astray, or out of 
 the right way. So far as any will may have thus 
 deviated, there is always something of the nature of 
 sin, but there also may be much of the nature of 
 accident or misfortune. All wrong-doing is deviation, 
 but all deviation may not proceed from a wrongful 
 purpose. The mark may be missed, and the stumble 
 
122 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 made in the darkness of unconsciousness, under blind 
 impulses for the moment irresistible. These can¬ 
 not make wrong right, but they may infinitely excuse 
 the wrong. The element of sin may barely exist in 
 certain acts of deviation, so little relation may they 
 have to the conscious personality of the agent. But 
 where the will deliberately asserts itself in wrong,— 
 choosing self-indulgence rather than self-control — 
 self-interest even to a brother’s hurt,—then sin appears 
 in its true character. It marks itself as the opposite 
 of what is known as love—the latter representing the 
 harmony of our personal life with the Divine, the 
 former the concentration of this life upon itself in 
 some form or another. As love is self-forgetfulness 
 in God, sin is self-assertion against Him. Always 
 there is this insurrectionary movement of self more 
 or less present, whatever particular form the sin may 
 take. It is not the form that is essential, but the inner 
 movement of self expressed in it. Let the outside 
 be stripped away, this core remains; and this it is, 
 or the self-will in an attitude of hostile erection to 
 the Divine, which is essentially sin. Hence, too, the 
 positive or affirmative character which is so radical a 
 note of sin. The true unity of the Divine and the 
 human, of which love is the symbol, is dissolved ; but 
 a false unity takes its place. The Divine ceases to 
 be the centre ; self becomes its own centre.* 
 
 * See Appendix XIV. 
 
DOCTRINE OF SIN AS IN THE GOSPELS. 123 
 
 There is this inward penetration everywhere in our 
 Lord’s teaching, in the manner in which He deals with 
 different classes of sinners, and the words with which 
 He fixes attention, not on the outside but the inside 
 of life. The Magdalene, and the Prodigal, and the 
 Publican, are all sinners in His sight. They have 
 gone astray, and turned every one to his own way. 
 Instead of the right they have chosen the wrong, and 
 followed after vanity. Their sin, as all sin, is hateful 
 to Him. He utters no word of leniency over it ; yet 
 he never speaks of it as he speaks of the sin of Phar¬ 
 isaic pride and Sadducean unbelief. The depth of 
 impurity and profligacy does not move Him, like the 
 depth of hypocrisy and hatred of the Good. There is 
 alienation from the Divine in both cases; but the 
 alienation is far more deliberate and self-concentrated 
 in the one case than in the other. And while in the 
 one He can say, “ Go, and sin no more; ” in the other 
 He says, “Ye do the deeds of your father. . . . Ye 
 are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your 
 father ye will do.” * He saw clearly to the heart, and 
 discriminates the sin according to the degree of its 
 evil in the self-will striving against the Divine. Simi¬ 
 larly He speaks of all defilement as being from with¬ 
 in, and not from without—a part of the self-life, and 
 not of the accidental or external life. The external 
 character should be without blame; but it is within 
 
 * John, viii. II, 41, 44. 
 
124 THE CHE/ST/AN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 the heart that the real character is formed. “Not 
 that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man, but 
 that which cometh out of the mouth, that defileth a 
 man. . . . Those things which proceed out of 
 
 the mouth come forth from the heart, and they de¬ 
 file the man. For out of the heart proceed evil 
 thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, 
 false-witness, blasphemies.”* All these are but vari¬ 
 ous forms of self-will turned away from the Divine, 
 and falsely seeking to make a centre for itself. 
 “These are the things which defile a man ; but to 
 eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.” *f* 
 
 4. There is a special aspect of sin, afterwards ela¬ 
 borated by St Paul, which also appears in our Lord’s 
 teaching. He characterises it not merely in act and 
 in essence, but as a condition and tendency of hum¬ 
 anity. Man not only sins, but he is a sinner naturally. 
 It is his nature and disposition to sin. “ Every good 
 tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree 
 bringeth forth evil fruit.” J “ The tree is known by 
 its fruit. O generation of vipers, how can ye, being 
 evil, speak good things ? for out of the abundance 
 of the heart the mouth speaketh.” § The import of 
 such language, as well as other forms of language || 
 —even when bearing a special application—is suffi¬ 
 ciently obvious. Sin is set forth as a disease or cor- 
 
 * Matt. XV. 11, 18, 19. + Matt. xv. 20. J Matt. vii. 17. 
 
 § Matt. xii. 33, 34. || Matt. ix. 12. 
 
DOCTRINE OF SIN AS IN THE GOSPELS. 125 
 
 ruption of human nature. It is not merely an act, 
 but a state which clings to the race, a tendency 
 lying in our nature, and which is constantly coming 
 forth into action. It is in the flesh — the product 
 of the natural birth ; and “ that which is born of 
 the flesh is flesh.” * This doctrine of the “ flesh ” 
 as the seat of sin will afterwards come before us 
 fully in the writings of St Paul. In the meantime, 
 it is interesting to trace the definite allusion to it in 
 the fourth Gospel. The idea is clearly announced, 
 but it is only touched. In St Paul we shall find it 
 fully expanded. 
 
 5. Along with this, another aspect of sin is very 
 prominent in the Gospels in connection with our 
 Lord’s miracles. Sin is not merely a disease or 
 corruption of human nature, but it is closely asso¬ 
 ciated with frightful forms of physical malady and 
 human unhappiness. It leaves a deep stain of guilt 
 and wretchedness which repeats itself in individuals, 
 families, and nations. The sick of the palsy needs 
 spiritual no less than physical healing. Nay, the 
 key of the bodily cure is through the spiritual. 
 “ Whether is easier to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee ; 
 or to say, Arise, and walk ? ” *f* The demon - pos¬ 
 sessed are diseased in body as in mind—blind and 
 dumb as well as insane and violent.* There is clearly 
 
 * John, iii. 6. J* Matt. ix. 5. 
 
 J Matt. viii. 28, xii. 22 ; Mark, v. 2-13. 
 
126 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 implied in our Lord’s language * a mysterious affin¬ 
 ity betwixt natural and moral evil. The latter 
 bears with it not only its proper doom of alienation 
 from all that is spiritually good, but carries with it, 
 moreover, a frequent train of natural doom and dis¬ 
 aster. It issues in many forms of guilt and misery, 
 and casts its gloomy shadow far beyond its imme¬ 
 diate subject. This aspect of sin will also again and 
 more elaborately meet us in St Paul; but it deserves 
 to be noted here, not only because it is so far clearly 
 indicated in our Lord’s teaching, but because He 
 has Himself also cautioned us against the arbitrary 
 misuse of the principle which it involves. While the 
 consequences of sin are so fatal in individuals and 
 in families, passing over in many forms of inherited 
 wretchedness from generation to generation, and 
 showing its existence in physical no less than in 
 moral calamity, we are not yet warranted in con¬ 
 necting natural and moral evil together in particular 
 cases. “ Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower 
 of Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were 
 sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem ? I 
 tell you, Nay; but, except ye repent, ye shall all 
 likewise perish/’ t Again, in a well-known passage in 
 the fourth Gospel: “ Master, who did sin, this man, 
 or his parents, that he was born blind ? Jesus an¬ 
 swered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his 
 * See also Luke, v. 20; John, v. 14. + Luke, xiii. 4, 5. 
 
DOCTRINE OF SIN AS IN THE GOSPELS. 127 
 
 parents : but that the works of God should be made 
 manifest in him.” * In other words—for this is what 
 our Lord’s teaching comes to in this matter—the 
 punitive justice of God is a great fact. It is stamped 
 on all the darker phenomena of human life—disease, 
 insanity, and death. It is in the nature of sin to en¬ 
 tail suffering, and work itself, as an element of pun¬ 
 ishment, into all the complicated web of human 
 existence. But it is not ours to fix or apportion its 
 blame. It is present in every form of suffering ; but 
 the incidence of suffering is no measure of individual 
 demerit in the tangled spectacle of human existence. 
 
 6. Sin, which thus belongs to our nature, and 
 cleaves to it so terribly, is necessarily universal. The 
 language of the Psalmist, “ There is no man that 
 doeth good and sinneth not,” is plainly the affir¬ 
 mation, if not in so many words, of Christ. He 
 addresses His invitation of grace to all. He is 
 come to seek and to save that which is lost.*f* The 
 clear inference is, that all have sunk from the good 
 which they ought to have—“ All have sinned, and 
 come short of the glory of God.” J No doubt, 
 there are passages also in which Christ seems to 
 discriminate betwixt members of the human race as 
 “evil and good,” “just and unjust,” § and where He 
 would even seem to imply that there are those who 
 
 * John, ix. 2, 3. f Luke, xix. 10. 
 
 £ Rom. iii. 23. § Matt. v. 45. 
 
128 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 have no need of His spiritual teaching,—“Theythat 
 are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. 
 I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to 
 repentance.” * But such passages are plainly cap¬ 
 able of an explanation, which leaves the fact of 
 universal sinfulness without challenge. They find 
 their explanation in the fact, that our Lord’s lan¬ 
 guage, here and everywhere, is not the language of 
 theological analysis, but of common life. And as 
 we say that there are good and bad men in the 
 world, without meaning to affirm that there are any 
 men without sin, so the Gospels speak of the evil 
 and the good, the just and the unjust. The “honest 
 and good heart” which receives the truth is not a 
 heart in which there is no evil, but one in which 
 the evil has not so hardened and shut $£ the work 
 of the Spirit as to prevent its responding to the force 
 of the truth when presented to it. There may still 
 be another meaning in such words of the Lord, as 
 that He came not to call the righteous , but siimers 
 to repentance—a meaning not without a latent touch 
 of satire, if we can imagine such a thing. The 
 “righteous” in His time was something of a phrase. 
 There were those like the Pharisees who made a pro¬ 
 fession of righteousness, “ going about to establish 
 their own righteousness.” t Our Lord might say 
 that He came not to call these—not that they did not 
 * Luke, v. 31, 32. + Rom. x. 3. 
 
DOCTRINE OF SIN AS IN THE GOSPELS. 129 
 
 need His call, but because they thought themselves 
 too good to need it. They were, after their own 
 views, perfect in legal righteousness, and they knew 
 of no other. There was nothing in them, any more 
 than there was in those altogether hardened in evil, 
 to respond to His call. In the one class the spiritual 
 consciousness was dead, in the other it was self-satis¬ 
 fied. The call of a Saviour could reach neither till 
 the depths of personal feeling were stirred in them, 
 and the distress of sin arose from these depths as 
 something too hard to be borne. 
 
 This spiritual susceptibility is everywhere presup¬ 
 posed as a condition of receiving divine grace and 
 truth. But the absence of the susceptibility is not 
 to be held as an evidence that we do not need both 
 — in other words, that we are not sinners. The 
 fact that we have no sense of our need—that we 
 have never cried “out of the depths,” “If thou. 
 Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall 
 stand ? ” — this, to say the least, only proves, not 
 that we have no sin, but that we have failed to 
 realise the responsibilities of our spiritual life—that 
 we have been living upon the surface of intellectual 
 and social conventions, and have never got down to 
 the depth of our own spiritual being, or fronted the 
 dreadful realities of sin, righteousness, and judgment. 
 It was easy to the Pharisee and Scribe in the time 
 of our Lord—it may be easy to the intellectualist 
 
 I 
 
130 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 and the man of the world now—to dwell within the 
 levels of their own conventional thought, and feel 
 from these levels as if a call to repentance had for 
 them no meaning. But let the levels once be broken 
 up, the fountains of their deeper life unsealed, and the 
 waters thereof roar and be troubled, and then the 
 spiritual call will be found to have an answer in 
 their hearts, and facts more real than any their con¬ 
 ventions have ever measured will find an utterance 
 within them. Let it be remembered, although it is 
 often forgotten, that Christianity always takes human 
 nature at the fullest—in its complete mass of need, 
 feeling, and aspiration. It is not man as Pharisee or 
 Sadducee, as intellectualist or mystic or sensualist, 
 but man as containing in himself the potencies of 
 all these—as a being of manifold complex energy, 
 with work and ambitions on earth, but with aspira¬ 
 tions towards heaven. Within such a full-souled 
 being, awake to his true position in the world, there 
 will always be—the Gospel assumes—the sense of 
 sin, the self-witness of having erred, and strayed, 
 and done evil before the eye of Divine Purity, that 
 searches us through and through, although it looks 
 not on our sin. 
 
 7. But this view of the subject suggests a further 
 and final characteristic of our Lord’s teaching 
 regarding sin, which it is important to notice. 
 While man is everywhere a sinner before Him who 
 
DOCTRINE OF SIN AS IN THE GOSPELS. I 31 
 
 was Himself “holy, harmless, undefiled,” yet he 
 is nowhere represented as nothing but a sinner. 
 “ There is no man that doeth good and sinneth 
 not ” in the Gospels any more than elsewhere in 
 Scripture. But the Gospels are singularly free from 
 those exaggerated colours in which a later theology 
 has sometimes drawn human nature. Man is a 
 fallen and degraded being. He is at the best, be he 
 Pharisee or Publican, among the “lost” whom Christ 
 came to seek and to save. But he is noble even in 
 his degradation. There is a capacity of divine life in 
 him, beneath all the ruin of his nature. He is god¬ 
 like, even with the image of his divine original 
 broken and defaced. The divine likeness is ob¬ 
 scured, but not obliterated. It maybe traced amidst 
 all the accumulations of sinful ruin. The very misery 
 of man, as Pascal has said—interpreting this aspect of 
 our Lord’s teaching—attests his true greatness. He 
 is a king dethroned, but still a king. The crown has 
 fallen from his head, its gold has become dim and 
 its most fine gold changed, but there is the faint 
 lustre of it yet on his brow, and the dignity of having 
 once worn it still lives in his heart. There is nothing 
 more characteristic of our Lord’s teaching than this 
 recognition of the divine original of humanity, and of 
 the divine potency which still survives in it. This is 
 the only key to His redemptive mission. He came 
 to recover the fallen, and to set up that which had 
 
132 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 been thrown down. He saw what was in man more 
 truly than all others. He saw the possibilities of 
 restoration in the demoniac and the Magdalene—the 
 promise of an eternal life in the trustfulness of the 
 thief upon the cross—the divine sparks still living 
 amidst all the waste of ruined lives. The cry of the 
 returning prodigal was heard by Him a far way off; 
 and even while he ate of the husks and grovelled 
 with the swine, the thought of his divine home had 
 not died out of him, and the capacity of return had 
 not absolutely perished. 
 
 Dark as sin ever is, therefore, in the view of our 
 Lord, and fallen as human nature is, it is not yet, 
 as it has been sometimes represented, a mere mass 
 of corruption. The tone which could say of it that 
 it contains nothing but sin, and produces nothing 
 which is not damnable,* is foreign to the Gospels. 
 Such language, even in its extravagance, may repre¬ 
 sent a true side of human nature—human nature 
 in entire divorce from the Divine — but certainly 
 not a fair picture of human life. The higher 
 vision of Christ embraces not only one side but 
 all sides of humanity, and penetrates beneath all 
 surface manifestations to its inner secrets. And 
 therefore His view is always at once compassionate 
 and comprehensive—stern, yet gracious. He sees 
 man not merely as he is or seems to be, but as he 
 
 * See Appendix XV. 
 
DOCTRINE OF SIN AS IN THE GOSPELS. 133 
 
 is capable of being. His vision is complete and 
 creative. It takes in the end from the beginning; 
 and from amidst the broken and ruined fragments 
 of the divine original beholds arising again, under His 
 redeeming touch and the quickening power of His 
 regenerating Spirit, new shapes of spiritual excel¬ 
 lence—the new man, created after His own image in 
 knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. 
 
 As one has said, speaking of this subject, in words 
 so fitly and eloquently descriptive that we may close 
 this Lecture with them :— 
 
 “Not half a century ago a great man was seen 
 stooping and working in a charnel-house of bones. 
 Uncouth, nameless fragments lay around him, which 
 the workmen had dug up and thrown aside as rub¬ 
 bish. They belonged to some far back ages ; and 
 no man knew what they were or whence. Few men 
 cared. The world was merry at the sight of a philo¬ 
 sopher groping among mouldy bones. But when 
 that creative mind, reverently discerning the fontal 
 types of being in diverse shapes, brought together 
 those strange fragments, bone to bone, and rib to 
 claw, and both to its corresponding vertebrae, re¬ 
 combining the wondrous forms of past ages, and 
 presenting each to the astonished world as it lived 
 and moved a hundred thousand years back, then 
 men began to perceive that a new science had begun 
 on earth. And such was the creative [vision and] 
 
134 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 work of Christ. He took the scattered fragments 
 of our ruined nature, interpreted their meaning, 
 showed the original intent of those powers which 
 were now only destructive—drew out from publicans 
 and sinners yearnings which were incomprehensible, 
 feelings which were misunderstood—vindicated the 
 beauty of their original intention, showed the divine 
 order below the chaos, and exhibited to the world 
 once more a human soul in the form in which God 
 had made it, saying to the dry bones, live.” * 
 
 * Sermons by the late Rev. F. W. Robertson. Second Series. 
 “ On Christ’s Estimate of Sin,” p. 199, 200. 
 
DOCTRINE OF ST PAUL'S EPISTLES. 
 
 135 
 
 V. 
 
 DOCTRINE OF ST PAUL’S EPISTLES. 
 
 It requires but little insight to recognise the differ¬ 
 ence of our Lord’s form of teaching in the Gospels, 
 and that of St Paul in his Epistles. In the former 
 case we have for the most part concrete statements 
 or pictures. The moral truth of Judaism and the 
 higher truths of the Gospel are described in life 
 and character. They come before us in authorita¬ 
 tive announcement or living form, in graphic inci¬ 
 dent or pictured parable. Sin and righteousness are 
 alike embodied in vivid representation. Even in 
 the Sermon on the Mount, and elsewhere where our 
 Lord appears directly as an instructor, and where, as 
 we have seen, He develops the idea of sin, amplifying 
 and deepening it, in contrast to His own spiritual 
 ideal, as a spiritual state or attitude, and not merely 
 an external act or breach of the letter of the law, He 
 does so not by explanation or argument, but by 
 revealed assertion and authority. He sets forth the 
 fact—His higher conception of the divine law on the 
 
136 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 one hand, and His deeper and more spiritual concep¬ 
 tion of sin on the other hand. He does not deal 
 in analysis or definition. 
 
 Nowhere in Scripture are the lines of the Good 
 and of the Evil drawn more firmly or brought into 
 sharper and clearer antagonism than in the Gospels. 
 We feel as we read them everywhere the vivid breath 
 of moral life and death. Sin in all its phases comes 
 out in striking reality in His presence who is the 
 “ Light of the world.” The forces of evil, whether 
 embodied in Pharisee or Sadducee, in Herodian or 
 Scribe, in Magdalene or Prodigal, in high priest or 
 Roman governor, are distinctly and powerfully con¬ 
 ceived, so that we can have no doubt of their features, 
 —what it is to be good and what it is to be evil—what 
 it is to be at one with the Divine, and what it is to 
 be opposed to it. But withal, the teaching is by affir¬ 
 mation or example rather than by definition—by 
 synthesis rather than by analysis. This is our Lord’s 
 manner : “ Verily, verily, I say unto you.” He taught 
 as one “ having authority, and not as the Scribes.” 
 His lessons were like the lessons of nature—graphic, 
 living, comprehensive—addressed to the eye as well 
 as the thought—majestic in their simplicity, inex¬ 
 haustible in their divine fulness of meaning. 
 
 It is very different with St Paul. He is a great 
 preacher, but he is still more characteristically a 
 great Christian scribe or writer. The fulness of 
 
DOCTRINE OF ST FADES EPISTLES. 
 
 137 
 
 divine truth is broken up in him into its several 
 parts. It does not dwell in him bodily. It is not 
 set forth by him—as in the Gospels—in creative and 
 ideal types. St Paul had been trained in the Jewish 
 schools. He had been a “ Hebrew of the Hebrews 
 —as touching the law a Pharisee.” He was familiar 
 not merely with the living aspects of Jewish thought 
 and character, but with the argumentative subtle¬ 
 ties of the one, and the practical casuistries of the 
 other. He was accustomed to find definitions for 
 his opinions, and arguments for his assertions. He 
 was a scholastic in intellect, if a missionary in enthu¬ 
 siasm. His manner, in calm statement, is essentially 
 dialectical. And so we find, as we might expect to 
 find, the more simple and concrete teaching of the 
 Gospels not only expanded in the Pauline Epistles, 
 but defined and analysed, and, if we may say so, 
 rationalised and set forth in its several elements 
 in their intellectual and spiritual relation to one 
 another. 
 
 Our business is only with St Paul’s doctrine of 
 sin ; but his doctrine on this subject is closely inter¬ 
 twined with his system of doctrine, and especially 
 with his central doctrine of righteousness by faith, 
 and his vivid, if varying, conception of the law. It 
 is necessary, so far, to bring into view his general 
 system of thought, in order to understand the full 
 meaning of his doctrine of sin. 
 
138 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 The two great ideas of righteousness and law were 
 typical ideas of the Hebrew mind. They were 
 essentially correlated, and the one can only be 
 understood in connection with the other. So soon 
 as we touch the sphere of Revelation we come pro¬ 
 minently within the range of moral law; we find 
 ourselves in face of a divine Will, and of human 
 wills rightfully subject to it. This is an infinitely 
 higher stage of thought than any attained within 
 the sphere of natural religion, or of religion outside 
 of Revelation. But whether admitted to be higher 
 or not, there can be no doubt of the fact that the 
 Old Testament is everywhere the Revelation of a 
 divine Will dealing with human wills ; and the tenor 
 of this Revelation is that the human will can only 
 find its happiness in harmony with the Divine. 
 This harmony of the Divine and human is right¬ 
 eousness ; and the key-note of the Old Testament 
 through all its pages is, that righteousness alone is 
 blessedness. “ Blessed is the man that walketh not 
 in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the 
 way of sinners. . . . But his delight is in the law of 
 the Lord. . . . The Lord knoweth the way of the 
 righteous ; but the way of the ungodly shall perish.” * 
 “ The word righteousness,” as a modern writer *f* has 
 said, “is the master-word of the Old Testament.” 
 “ Blessed are they that keep judgment, and he that 
 
 * Psalm i. 1, 2, 6. f M. Arnold, Lit. and Dogma, p. 18. 
 
DOCTRINE OF ST PAUL’S EPISTLES. 
 
 139 
 
 doeth righteousness.”* “Cease to do evil; learn 
 to do well.”*f* “ Stand in awe, and sin not. . . . 
 Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your 
 trust in the Lord.”+ Here righteousness consists in 
 obedience to law, or conformity of the human will 
 to the Divine. To be right, is to be at one with God ; 
 to be wrong, is to be at variance with God. God is 
 not only the head of the Hebrew theocracy—the 
 divine source from which it came—but He is a living 
 presence through all its manifestations and activities. 
 The divine Will was supposed to be immediately 
 expressed in every channel of the Hebrew law and 
 prophets—as much in one channel, or part of it, as 
 another. “ The law, the fulfilment of the law ” 
 (righteousness), “ and the divine Author of the law, 
 pass into each other. The mind is carried on im¬ 
 perceptibly from the one to the other.” § 
 
 To us the divine law is specially the moral law, 
 or the ten words or commandments of Moses. We 
 distinguish betwixt what we call the ceremonial 
 or the political law of the Jews, and the moral law. 
 But the Jews themselves made no such distinction. 
 The law was to them in their later history the whole 
 law of Moses as contained in the Pentateuch. Nay, 
 the term law assumed a still wider significance, 
 and seems to have been identified with the whole 
 
 * Psalm cvi. 3. t Isa. i. 16, 17. X Psalm iv. 4, 5. 
 
 § Jowett’s Com. on the Epistle to the Romans, p. 54. 
 
I40 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 letter of the Old Testament, as interpreted and 
 applied by the Sopherim or Scribes. St Paul uses 
 the word in more senses than one. It has, we shall 
 see, a higher or universal meaning for him, as well 
 as a common meaning. But the common meaning 
 which it bears for him, as for other Jews, is the 
 whole Jewish or Old Testament system* This was 
 the law which he had known before his conversion, 
 as touching which he was a Pharisee. And this is 
 the law which plays such a part in his writings, in 
 contrast to the Gospel and the freedom which the 
 Gospel brings with it. 
 
 The mind of the Jew was impregnated by this 
 idea of law. It was the law which made his reli¬ 
 gion. The two terms, or the two ideas, had be¬ 
 come co-ordinate with him. He rested in the law, 
 and made his boast of God as its Author.t It 
 was to him a vast system, all equally of divine 
 authorship. It is easy for us to trace and esti¬ 
 mate the relation of its several parts, and to dis¬ 
 tinguish what is spiritual and permanent in it, from 
 what is ceremonial and temporary. But this was 
 the last thing of which a Jewish mind was cap¬ 
 able. All in his religion seemed to the Jew equally 
 sacred. It is the tendency of all national religion 
 
 * I Cor. ix. 9, xiv. 34; Rom. v. 13, 20; Gal. ii. 14, 16, iii. 17, 
 19. See Appendix XVI. 
 
 t Rom. ii. 17. 
 
 1 
 
DOCTRINE OF ST RADI’S EPISTLES. 14I 
 
 to take up into it much that is accidental and 
 temporary, and to extend the same sanction of 
 divine authority to all parts of its creed and ritual 
 —the non-essential no less than the essential. And 
 this tendency was one specially favoured by the 
 character of Judaism after the Captivity, and the 
 prominence which it gave to the scholastic element 
 in its exposition and diffusion. St Paul inherited 
 this tendency in its full force as a typical Jew—“ a 
 Hebrew of the Hebrews.” The Jewish law had been 
 to him, at least, all that it was to other Jews of his 
 time. He seems jealous that any should be able 
 to say that they prized it more than he had done; 
 that they understood it better, or placed a more ex¬ 
 tended and significant meaning upon it. If it had 
 been possible to be saved by the law—by apprecia¬ 
 tion of its divine character, by faithful and zealous 
 obedience to its prescriptions—he would have found 
 that salvation. As touching the righteousness which 
 is in the law, he held himself blameless. 
 
 When St Paul speaks specially of the law, there¬ 
 fore, in contrast to the Gospel, he means the whole 
 Jewish law. He did not, as we are now in the 
 habit of doing, discriminate its parts, or separate 
 them in their historical development and relative 
 importance, any more than the other Jews of his 
 time. What he did, and what distinguished him as 
 a spiritual thinker and teacher, was something far 
 
142 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 more important than this. He saw that the idea of 
 law was not limited by its Jewish conception. The 
 thought in which he had been bred clung to him. 
 Judaism was to him a great system of antique 
 growth, and venerable in all its parts. He had 
 faithfully tried to find religious life within the sys¬ 
 tem, and yielded to none in the admiration with 
 which he had regarded it. But all the while he 
 had been learning that the thought of God was 
 greater than any system. And when he became a 
 Christian he saw this clearly. He saw that God 
 had never left Himself without a witness on the 
 earth ; and that what He had been specially doing 
 for the Jewish people by the law, He had been more 
 or less doing for all people by the voice of reason 
 and the monitions of conscience. 
 
 While the law, therefore, remained to St Paul 
 what he had been trained to esteem it—the whole 
 sphere of the theocratic institutions (only seen in a 
 more spiritual light)—yet it lost for him its exclu¬ 
 siveness. It took its place, not as the whole of the 
 divine plan for man’s spiritual education, which, be¬ 
 fore his conversion, it had seemed to him as well as 
 to other Jews, but only as a phase of that plan, pre¬ 
 ceded by the divine promise to Abraham, and sup¬ 
 plemented by all the indications of natural reason 
 and conscience outside of Judaism. The idea of law, 
 in short, was for him expanded and broadened in a 
 
DOCTRINE OF ST RAUL’S EPISTLES 
 
 143 
 
 sense unknown to Pharisaism. It became a universal 
 principle of moral order encompassing all life, how¬ 
 ever dimly known or realised. The Jews had en¬ 
 joyed a special Revelation. The Divine had been 
 made clear to them in definite command and 
 precept,—“ Line upon line, precept upon precept.” 
 This was their privilege and boast. There could be 
 no doubt, therefore, of their responsible relation to 
 the Divine. The only doubt was whether the Divine 
 had not been obscured to them by the very multi¬ 
 plicity of the sanctions which had been drawn from 
 it—whether they had not lost the quick sense of 
 the spiritual in the manifoldness of the letter. But 
 the fact of a divine Ideal was something which all 
 nations might have known—an undeniable reality 
 revealed in nature, and cognisable by reason and 
 conscience. The invisible things of God were to 
 be clearly seen in creation and providence by all 
 discerning and devout hearts. Reverence for the 
 Divine, and obedience to it, were therefore obliga¬ 
 tory within the pale of Gentilism no less than of 
 Judaism. The absence of a special Revelation, or 
 definite form of divine law, did not leave men ex¬ 
 cused in their violations of duty. There was the 
 capacity in all men of reaching to a knowledge of 
 the Divine, and of a higher divine order ; and this, in 
 the absence of definite divine institutions, was a law 
 in itself. “ For when the Gentiles, which have not 
 
144 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, 
 these having not the law are a law unto themselves.”* 
 Here the common and higher meaning of the word 
 appear together ; and the apostle passes rapidly from 
 the one to the other, the great thought in both cases 
 being that there is a moral order behind all moral 
 life, and that the truth and rightness of the life are 
 only found in consistency with the order. 
 
 This is the backbone, so to speak, of all St Paul’s 
 thought, as indeed of that Hebrew thought which he 
 so prominently represented. He was not less but 
 more a Hebrew in that he was capable of rising 
 above the Jewish stand-point of his time, and em¬ 
 bracing not only the chosen race but the human race 
 within his moral Ideal. The Jews were especially 
 the children of law. They had been placed under 
 special divine tutelage and government, for the very 
 purpose that the idea of divine authority might be 
 brought home to the human mind, and made a living 
 part of it. Their system of policy and government, 
 therefore, was especially the law, and it was difficult 
 for the ordinary Jewish mind to conceive of divine 
 authority apart from a system which was for it 
 equivalent to the Divine. St Paul did not himself 
 see beyond it for a time. But when the broader 
 vision came to him, it was not by losing the moral 
 depth of his early faith, but by understanding and 
 
 * Rom. ii. 14. 
 
DOCTRINE OF ST FADE’S EPISTLES. 145 
 
 realising it more clearly. He did not, in other 
 words, pass out of Hebraism to a less serious view 
 of humanity ; but he extended its essential thought 
 so as to embrace humanity. The principle of divine 
 authority which his national religion had nurtured was 
 set free in his mind from the restraints in which he 
 and other Jewish teachers had been accustomed to 
 regard it, and was felt to be a universal principle 
 lying at the root of all human happiness and all 
 moral progress. 
 
 It is in the light of this principle of law or moral 
 order that St Paul views all mankind, and that his 
 doctrine of sin is set forth in its several aspects. 
 Carrying with him this principle, he applied it to Jew 
 and Gentile alike, and pronounced all men to be 
 sinners. With reference to the same principle, more 
 or less, he unfolded the nature and the effects of sin. 
 The main points of the Pauline doctrine will arrange 
 themselves naturally under three successive heads : 
 1st, The universality of sin ; 2d, The nature or seat of 
 sin ; and, 3d, The effects or consequences of sin. St 
 Paul has a great deal to say on all these points that 
 it concerns us to know, and his manner of teaching 
 them is all the more interesting that it involves 
 throughout an appeal to experience. Granting to 
 him the principle which lies behind all his thought, 
 and which it was the great function of Hebraism to 
 plant in the human consciousness, that man is a moral 
 
 K 
 
146 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 being subject to divine authority—in other words, 
 a subject of law — St Paul works out his doctrine 
 of sin in the main experimentally. He takes man, 
 and, placing him in the mirror of divine law, shows 
 him all the ruin and sadness of his moral state. He 
 appeals against himself to facts of experience which 
 admit of no denial; and lays bare the hidden folds 
 of his moral consciousness with a keenness of psycho¬ 
 logical analysis that penetrates to the roots of his 
 spiritual nature. We receive his words as words of 
 divine authority; but they derive a peculiar interest 
 and power from the manner in which they bring us 
 into contact with spiritual facts, and clothe them¬ 
 selves with a life of experience which all higher 
 minds may verify. It is in the great Epistle to the 
 Romans that St Paul especially unfolds his doctrine 
 of sin, and to which our attention, therefore, will be 
 mainly confined in this and the following Lecture. 
 
 1. In the opening of the epistle, St Paul brings 
 mankind, both Jew and Gentile, to the bar of moral 
 judgment. He sets them in the light of that divine 
 righteousness which had been growing in the con¬ 
 sciousness of the devout Israelite for centuries, and 
 which had received such a powerful illustration in 
 the life and death of Christ. This righteousness was 
 a subject of Revelation. Man had not reached it by 
 his own tentative moral gropings or ideas. It had 
 come forth from God, the expression of His charac- 
 
DOCTRINE OF ST RAUFS EPISTLES. 
 
 147 
 
 ter and will, and had only been attainable always 
 through a living relation to Him—in other words, 
 through faith. The life of the righteous spoken of 
 in the Old Testament was, in its highest form, not 
 a life of moral effort, but of divine receptivity, as 
 when Habakkuk says that “ the just shall live by 
 his faith.” * But the actual state, both of the 
 Gentile and the Jewish world, was infinitely removed 
 from this life of righteousness, which is only realised 
 through faith in the Divine. And with the view of 
 showing this, he turns first to the moral state of the 
 Gentiles. He speaks of what he sees around him. 
 There is no reason to suppose that he exaggerates 
 the picture of ungodliness and immorality which he 
 draws with so powerful a pencil. 
 
 As the life of righteousness or moral order was 
 the realisation of the divine Will for man, so the life of 
 unrighteousness and moral disorder was the reverse 
 of this, and therefore hateful to God. As the one 
 was the object of divine complacency, the other was 
 the object of divine wrath. And as St Paul looked 
 abroad over the Gentile world, he saw everywhere 
 the revelation of this wrath against the abounding 
 enormities of human sin.t Nor could the Gentiles 
 plead ignorance of the Divine in excuse of their 
 impiety and unrighteousness. On the contrary, 
 the very strength of his accusation against them is 
 * Hah. ii. 4 ; Rom. i. 17. + Rom. i. 18. 
 
148 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 that they hindered, obscured, and obstructed the 
 truth by their unrighteousness.* The Divine was 
 sufficiently made known to them. God had Him¬ 
 self made it known in the works of nature and in 
 the instincts of the Divine originally planted with¬ 
 in their hearts. The apostle clearly indicates the 
 fact of man being able to reach the knowledge of 
 the Divine without a special or positive Revelation. 
 There is a faculty of God-knowledge in man origi¬ 
 nally, a susceptibility of higher truth, for the use of 
 which man is responsible, and for the abuse of which 
 he is condemnable. “ That which may be known of 
 God is manifest in them ; for God hath showed it 
 unto them. For the invisible things of Him from 
 the creation of the world are clearly seen, being 
 understood by the things that are made, even His 
 eternal power and Godhead ; so that they are with¬ 
 out excuse.”*!* There is that in man, call it reason 
 or conscience, which, looking out upon the world, 
 ought to see in it the expression of divine thought 
 
 . 
 
 and energy—of a living and eternal Mind ; and, the 
 primary root of sin in the Gentiles was that they had 
 allowed the revelation of the Divine to be utterly 
 obscured in them. Made capable of knowing God, 
 and having around them a constant witness of His 
 eternal power and Godhead, they failed to glorify 
 Him as God, or to cherish feelings of reverence or 
 
 * Rom. i. 18. f Rom. i. 19, 20. 
 
DOCTRINE OF ST PAUL'S EPISTLES. 
 
 149 
 
 thankfulness towards the divine Author of their 
 being and of the world. “ They became vain in their 
 imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 
 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 
 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into 
 an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, 
 and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Where¬ 
 fore God also gave them up to uncleanness through 
 the lusts of their own hearts.” # 
 
 The source of sin in the Gentile world was this 
 obscuration of the idea of God. Man having sunk 
 away from God, necessarily sank away from the life 
 of righteousness which was only to be found in the 
 knowledge of the divine character, and conformity 
 to the divine will. The truth which they might have 
 known they hindered, and changed into a lie. t Ab¬ 
 juring the creative Will, and turning away from its 
 manifestations, they fell under the dominion of the 
 creature. Nature took the place of the Divine in 
 their hearts; and the consequences are pictured 
 with a terrible realism by the apostle. 
 
 It is unnecessary for us to touch the details of the 
 picture. It is enough to draw attention to the fact 
 which he emphasises at the close—that the sins of 
 which he speaks were pronounced to be sins even by 
 the higher sense of those who practised them. The 
 idea of divine law was not utterly gone in the Gen- 
 * Rom. i. 21-24. + Rom. i. 25. 
 
150 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 tile mind, even amidst the sinful excesses which he 
 describes. There was a divine voice which made 
 itself heard through all, passing judgment on such 
 things ; and the worst that could be said of the Gen¬ 
 tiles—their deepest sin—was that they, “ knowing the 
 judgment of God, that they which commit such 
 things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but 
 have pleasure in them that do them.” * 
 
 But were the Jews any better in reality? Were 
 they any less sinners, notwithstanding all their pri¬ 
 vileges ? With them there could be no question of 
 a knowledge of the Divine. They had received 
 the law and the prophets. The life of divine right¬ 
 eousness had been set forth in word, example, sac¬ 
 rifice, and precept, in their sacred books. To them 
 had been committed “ the oracles of God.” + What 
 was the outcome of all this ? Much good, no doubt. 
 This is not denied; on the contrary, it is plainly im¬ 
 plied by the apostle. But was the life of righteousness, 
 after all, really more conspicuous amongst them ? 
 They boasted of their privileges. They were ready 
 and zealous in their condemnation of the heathen. 
 But their condemnation of the heathen, the apostle 
 states broadly, meant their own condemnation. 
 The Jewish critic was condemned out of his own 
 mouth,—“ For wherein thou judgest another, thou 
 condemneth thyself; for thou that judgest doest the 
 * 
 
 Rom. i. 32. 
 
 + Rom. iii. 2. 
 
DOCTRINE OF ST FADE’S EPISTLES. I 5 I 
 
 same things.” And the judgment of God is equally 
 true against all evil - doers. It allows no one to 
 escape.* Divine righteousness is impartial, and 
 renders “ to every man according to his deeds.” t 
 The apostle enters into an elaborate expostulation 
 with the Jew, proving at length to him that his law 
 of which he boasts cannot benefit him unless he has 
 fulfilled it. For it was not the hearer but the doer 
 of the law that was righteous before God. The 
 Gentiles who had done what was right according to 
 their light—who, having not the law, “ had done by 
 nature the things contained in the law,” J were better 
 really than the Jews, who, having their law and rest¬ 
 ing in it—knowing the divine will, and approving 
 “the things that are more excellent, being instructed 
 out of the law”—yet failed of its fulfilment. Of their 
 failure in word and deed he leaves no doubt. “ For 
 the name of God is blasphemed among the Gen¬ 
 tiles,” he adds, “through you.”§ The privileges of 
 the Jew, therefore, were nothing without the spiritual 
 realities they were designed to represent. “ For he is 
 not a Jew who is one outwardly ; neither is that cir¬ 
 cumcision which is outward in the flesh : but he is a 
 Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that 
 of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter.” || 
 The result of his analysis and argument is, that the 
 
 * Rom. ii. 2, 3 et seq. + Rom. ii. 6. 
 
 J Rom. ii. 14. § Rom. ii. 24. || Rom. ii. 29. 
 
152 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 Jew, merely as Jew, or an external member of the 
 theocracy, is no better than the Gentile. Both are 
 “ proved ” by him to be alike “ under sin.” * The 
 demands of divine righteousness being set over 
 against human life, it is seen to fall infinitely below 
 these demands. The divine ideal which encom¬ 
 passes it, and within which alone it can reach its true 
 happiness, is nowhere realised. The voice of reason 
 and conscience is quenched amongst the heathen. 
 The law is broken by the Jew while he yet boasts 
 of it. And what is true of Jew and Gentile, is true 
 of man universally. The conclusion of the apostle 
 —based upon facts of observation around him, in the 
 Jewish and Gentile world—is plainly a conclusion of 
 universal experience: “ For all have sinned, and 
 come short of the glory of God.” f 
 
 2. Having thus established the universality of sin 
 as a fact of experience, the apostle enters upon an 
 analysis of its character and origin in human nature. 
 It is not enough for him to assert the fact, as the 
 basis of his great doctrine of righteousness—not by 
 works, but by faith. He shows how the fact origi¬ 
 nates in the constitution of human nature. There 
 is in all men, he explains, a higher and lower nature. 
 The latter he everywhere designates by the term 
 “ flesh,” J and develops its nature and properties now 
 in antagonism to the “ spirit §” or divine principle, 
 * Rom. iii. 9. + Rom. iii. 23. J 
 
 § Uv(vfj.a. 
 
DOCTRINE OF ST RADI’S EPISTLES. 
 
 153 
 
 and now in contrast to what he calls the “ mind ; ” * 
 for St Paul is curiously elaborate in his analysis of 
 human nature. He was a spiritual psychologist long 
 before the birth of psychology as a science. The 
 seat of sin, he says, is in the “flesh.” It is the ex¬ 
 pression of this lower element of human life : “ For I 
 know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no 
 good thing.”-]- The unregenerate “walk after the 
 flesh ; ” the regenerate, “ after the spirit.” These 
 two elements—the flesh and the spirit —mark the 
 extreme poles of his thought. The one is the seat 
 of sin and death, the other is the seat of holiness 
 and life. The one is human nature estranged from 
 the Divine; the other is human nature at one with 
 the Divine—the Divine in man, as well as the divine 
 Power above him, which raises him to the higher 
 sphere. These two elements are always and utterly 
 at variance. “ The flesh lusteth against the spirit, 
 and the spirit against the flesh: and these are con¬ 
 trary the one to the other.” + The works of the 
 flesh are all works of sin, as catalogued in the fifth 
 chapter of Galatians. The fruit of the Spirit is in 
 the higher and quite distinct sphere of the spirit¬ 
 ual life. 
 
 The breadth of this contrast everywhere appears 
 in St Paul’s epistles, and in describing it, the ex¬ 
 pression “ flesh ” is used to designate all the evil 
 
 * Nous. t Rom. vii. 18. J Gal. v. 17. 
 
154 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 activity of human nature. It describes not merely 
 the desires of the body, the appetites and motions of 
 our carnal frame, but all that is in us opposed to the 
 Divine. The mind or reason may so come under the 
 dominion of the flesh as to be virtually identical 
 with it. The apostle, for example, speaks of being 
 “ puffed up by a fleshly mind,” * and even of a 
 “ fleshly wisdom.” *f* The flesh, therefore, is not to 
 be confounded with mere sensuality. It is sense or 
 nature predominant in us ; our whole life of activity 
 separated from the Divine and turned against it— 
 not merely this life on the side of sensual passion. 
 The mind, which is actuated by sense, and ruled by 
 its power, is equally within the lower sphere. This 
 is what the apostle calls “the mind” or “thought of 
 the flesh ; ” and this is specially declared to be hos¬ 
 tile to God, the enemy of the Divine, j 
 
 But while the mind may be thus subject to the 
 flesh, and the two make war against the Spirit or 
 the Divine, the mind may also itself be alive and 
 powerful, and may enter, in its own strength, into 
 a struggle with the flesh ; in other words, the higher 
 nature of man, always depressed and often entirely 
 controlled by the lower nature, may also assert its 
 own rights as an antagonist of the lower nature, and 
 
 * Qvcriovfxzvo s virb rov vobs ttjs crapKbs —Col. ii. 18. 
 
 t ’Ey crocp'ia crapKiKrj. 
 
 I “The carnal mind” (rb cpp6yr]fj.a ttjs crapKbs) “is enmity against 
 God”—Rom. viii. 7 - 
 
DOCTRINE OF ST FADES EPISTLES. 
 
 155 
 
 strenuously resist its domination. St Paul seems 
 clearly to recognise the reality of this conflict no 
 less than the other.* His view sometimes enlarges 
 to the one, sometimes contracts to the other. He 
 now looks at human nature, banded in all its ener¬ 
 gies against the Divine, and then he looks at it as 
 the sphere of a terrible struggle betwixt the good 
 and the evil. This appears to be the only fair 
 interpretation of the remarkable seventh chapter of 
 the Epistle to the Romans, although, I need hardly 
 say, it has been differently interpreted. Here the 
 antagonistic elements are not the “ flesh ” and the 
 “spirit,” but the “flesh” and something higher within 
 the man himself—“the inward man,” -f “the law of 
 the mind ; ” + and the whole picture conveys the idea 
 of the essential war there is in every conscious moral 
 life betwixt the higher and lower principles at work 
 within it. The general result of the apostle’s analysis 
 seems to be as follows :— 
 
 Man is a creature of mingled impulses, some higher 
 and some lower. Moral life only begins in him with 
 the consciousness of this double or contradictory 
 nature, partly drawing him to good and partly draw¬ 
 ing him to evil. It seems plainly recognised that 
 
 * See Appendix XVII.—Neander’s exposition of the Pauline doctrine, 
 in his History of the Planting and Training of the Christian Church 
 (B. vi., c. i.), where this view seems to me to be clearly vindicated. 
 
 *t V E era) HvOponros —Rom. vii. 22. 
 
 X Nd/uos tov vo 6 s —Rom. vii. 23. 
 
156 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 man may go on without any moral consciousness. 
 He may be dead in sin.* The flesh may usurp his 
 whole nature. There may be nothing beyond its life 
 in him. Conscience may be asleep, or may never 
 lift its eyes to take in the solemn realities of duty. 
 But it is always there, even when slumbering at its 
 post; and when the sense of duty — or, in other 
 words, the law—is brought home to it, there is no 
 more contentedness in the mere natural or selfish 
 life. The higher being is awakened. The sense of 
 sin—previously unknown, because the sense of duty 
 was unfelt—comes forth in full vividness against the 
 law made clear in conscience. It requires the con¬ 
 sciousness of the law to reveal sin in us : not that the 
 law itself is evil, or the cause of sin ; on the contrary, 
 it is “holy, and the commandment holy, and just, 
 and good.” -}- But the revelation of the law within 
 us, or the law consciously realised, is at the same time 
 the revelation of sin. When the moral Ideal which 
 should lead our lives rises clearly in the horizon of 
 consciousness, then for the first time we feel how 
 miserably short we come of the Ideal. It is easy to 
 live contentedly if we have no Ideal. If we have 
 no higher thoughts, how should our lower thoughts 
 distract us ? There is nothing for them to disturb 
 —no higher expectations for them to clash with. 
 
 It may seem to some—it has seemed to many— 
 
 * Eph. ii. I, 5. 
 
 + Rom. vii. 12. 
 
DOCTRINE OF ST PAUL'S EPISTLES. 
 
 IS 7 
 
 a good thing to have no sense of sin. There are 
 people who say they cannot tell what sin is ; they are 
 not conscious of it, and they may count themselves 
 happy in this unconsciousness. Not so the apostle. 
 There was great misery to him in the consciousness \ 
 of sin ; but there was something still more dreadful 
 in its unconsciousness. This was to have sunk out 
 of the sphere of moral experience altogether, into 
 a mere animal or fleshly sphere; to have lost not 
 merely the Divine, but, so to speak, the capacity of 
 it—any trace of it upon which the higher power 
 could take hold, and draw the sinner to itself. 
 This was the worst of all states to him—a state in 
 which he had found himself when “ without the law 
 sin zvas dead .” * The state into which the law 
 brought him was miserable enough, but its misery 
 was better than insensibility. Better to feel the 
 wretchedness of having come short of a moral Ideal, 
 than not to have such an Ideal at all. It was true that 
 the revelation of the law within him destroyed his 
 self-complacency. It depressed and killed his for¬ 
 mer self-righteous life. “ For I was alive,” he says, 
 “without the law once; but when the commandment 
 came, sin revived, and I died.”*}* He “had not known 
 lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.” X 
 This might seem to be the worse state, and to make 
 the law the source of sin. But not so. The sin is 
 
 * Rom. vii. 8. + Rom. vii. 9. J Rom. vii. 7. 
 
158 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 in human nature all the while; only the law wakes 
 it by its quickening touch. It is as if a man were to 
 take a candle into some noisome place full of unclean 
 life lying torpid in the darkness, and under the 
 searching light the life began to stir and show itself in 
 its dark reality. Such is the effect of the law within 
 the human heart. It makes sin manifest as a real 
 and conscious power. And so the apostle says of it, 
 in language that sounds paradoxical and has given 
 rise to much controversy, but which has a real mean¬ 
 ing to all spiritual minds like his own, that “the 
 strength of sin is the law.” * It is the consciousness 
 of law that gives all its force to the consciousness of 
 sin. And the more the law is realised as the true 
 bond of our lives, the more fatal will its infractions 
 be felt as they appear in these lives. The conscious¬ 
 ness of sin, therefore, is the result of the law; but we 
 do not infer from this, as some have done, that 
 the apostle identifies sin and its consciousness, so 
 that “ where there is no consciousness of sin there is 
 no sin.” f Nothing can be further from his stand¬ 
 point, as we have seen. Sin is always in human 
 nature. It may be torpid; the flesh may have 
 invaded the whole sphere of human activity, and 
 killed every higher element of life. The stillness of 
 
 * I Cor. xv. 56. 
 
 + Baur’s St Paul, ii. 141 ; Jowett’s Com. on the Epistle to the 
 Romans, p. 504, 505. See Appendix XVIII. 
 
DOCTRINE OF ST RANDS EPISTLES. 
 
 159 
 
 death may reign within the darkened chamber. But 
 this state is worse than the other, and the misery of 
 struggle is better than the contentment of death. 
 
 The struggle which the apostle draws betwixt the 
 higher and the lower nature is certainly a terrible one; 
 There are not merely two elements at war within the 
 soul, but two habits or tendencies. The flesh is not 
 merely a succession of rebellious instincts, but “ a law 
 of sin in the members”—“a body of death.”* The 
 instincts of evil are gathered into an order which 
 arrays itself against the higher order of the mind. 
 The man is rent, as it were, in twain. His very per¬ 
 sonality is broken up—now on the side of the good, 
 and now helpless under the evil. “ It is no more I 
 that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. . . . For the 
 good that I would I do not: but the evil which I 
 would not, that I do. ... I find then a law, that, 
 when I would do good, evil is present with me. For 
 I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 
 
 but I see another law in my members, warring 
 against the law of my mind, and bringing me into 
 captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.” t 
 The language of the apostle implies the hopelessness 
 of this struggle, looked at from a mere human point 
 of view, so long as only the mind or the higher 
 principle within us is the antagonist of the flesh. 
 It must be reinforced by the Divine. The mind 
 
 * Rom. vii. 23, 24. 
 
 f Rom. vii. 17, 19, 21-23. 
 
160 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 must be changed into the spirit,—in other words, 
 the reason must be spiritualised. The divine 
 Power must become ours before the power of the 
 flesh can be mastered. Otherwise the higher self still 
 goes down under the force of the lower—even when 
 it clings to its Ideal, and says in despair—It is not 
 I, but sin. “ When I would do good, evil is present 
 with me. . . . O wretched man that I am! who shall 
 deliver me from the body of this death ? ” 
 
 To sum up our exposition, the seat of sin we 
 have seen with St Paul is the “flesh.” This in its 
 broadest sense is distinguished from the “ spirit.” 
 As thus distinguished, the flesh represents the 
 whole of human nature in its estrangement from 
 the Divine—all the activities of body and mind 
 with which fallen man is capable of opposing the 
 Divine. Reason, or our higher nature, may in this 
 sense be flesh no less than the body. There may 
 be a wisdom after the flesh and a righteousness of 
 the same character. The idea of the flesh, in short, 
 may invade the whole sphere of human nature, and 
 is supposed to do so when it is brought into contact 
 with the spirit. But the “ mind,” reason, or higher 
 thought, may also set itself against the flesh, instead 
 of yielding to the lower principle, and may enter into 
 conflict with it in its own strength, and fight it with 
 its native weapons. This it does more or less in all 
 higher natures. The law of the mind refuses to bend 
 
DOCTRINE OF ST FADE’S EPISTLES. l6l 
 
 to the law of the members, but wars against it. 
 Unless reinforced by a higher principle, it wars un¬ 
 successfully. But this is no reason for denying the 
 reality of the struggle, or for making human nature 
 worse than it is. It is something that the mind 
 refuses to bend to the flesh, and that even if beaten 
 in the struggle, it is there to show that man has not 
 utterly sunk into evil and made it his good. 
 
 3. We turn, in conclusion, to consider the effects 
 or consequences of sin as described by St Paul. 
 These occupy a prominent place in his system of 
 thought, and constitute an essential element of his doc¬ 
 trine. The effects of sin are viewed by the apostle 
 under two aspects—the one in the main subjective, 
 the other objective. The general name by which he 
 describes the former is “ death.” “ The wages of 
 sin,” he says, “ is death.” * “ What fruit had ye then 
 in those things whereof ye are now ashamed ? for the 
 end of those things is death .” f “ When we were in 
 the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, 
 did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto 
 death!'\ This solemn expression occurs incessantly 
 in St Paul’s writings in connection with our subject. 
 Death everywhere follows sin as its shadow. A state 
 of sin is a state of death. The unregenerate are de¬ 
 scribed as “ dead in their sins,” § as “ dead in tres- 
 
 * Ta oipcivia rr/s a^aprias Qavan-os —Rom. vi. 23. 
 f Rom. vi. 21. t Rom. vii. 5. § Col. ii.‘ 13. 
 
 L 
 
162 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 passes and sins.” * The presence of the flesh 
 oppressing the mind is a “ body of death.” f The 
 issue of sin is death. It is the end to which it leads, 
 the wages which it receives. The one cleaves to the 
 other inseparably—not only death to sin, but sin to 
 death. For “ the sting,” or “ goad,” “ of death is 
 sin.” j It is sin that urges death on, and makes it 
 so bitter in the result. 
 
 Such language necessarily carries us, as it carried 
 St Paul, back to the idea of death associated with 
 the primal sin. “Ye shall not eat of it ” (“ the fruit of 
 the tree in the midst of the garden ”), “ neither shall ye 
 touch it, lest ye die.” § There the main meaning, as 
 we formerly said, must be supposed to be spiritual. 
 The act was a moral act. It bore with it the seeds 
 of moral injury. Disobedience of the divine com¬ 
 mand involved the loss of that divine communion 
 which is the true life of the moral creature. The 
 will which had turned away from God had the seeds 
 of weakness and wickedness implanted in it. It 
 lost spiritual healthfulness ; it sank into decay and 
 dissolution. 
 
 But what of physical death ? it may be asked. 
 Is not this also in Scripture immediately connected 
 with sin as its consequence ? Is it not so specially 
 
 * Eph. ii. i. f Rom. vii. 24. 
 
 + Tb Sf KeW pop rov tiavuTOv tj it-fj-apria — I Cor. xv. 56. 
 § Gen. iii. 3. 
 
DOCTRINE OF ST PAUL'S EPISTLES. 163 
 
 in St Paul’s Epistles ? * What, then, are we to make 
 of this ? To the modern mind death is a purely 
 natural fact. It comes in course of time as the 
 natural issue of all organism, which by its very 
 life spends itself, and hastens towards dissolution 
 as an inevitable end. We cannot conceive any in¬ 
 dividual life perpetuated under the existing laws 
 of the external world. Continued life is only pos¬ 
 sible through death ; and new organisms can only 
 spring from the decay of the old. The physical 
 fact of death, therefore, cannot be traced to sin as 
 its sole cause. Nor can St Paul be said to do this. 
 Even when he speaks of death as the dissolution 
 of the body, it is not only this dissolution that he 
 means, but death with all its adjuncts of pain and 
 sadness and spiritual apprehension. This is the 
 death of which sin is the sting. This is the ordinary 
 fact to all thoughtful men—not the mere decay of 
 an organism which, because it is an organism, must 
 decay, and by the mere fact of its living waste 
 away. In such decay there is sadness as in all 
 decay, yet nothing strange or gloomy. Death is 
 always more than this to men and women who 
 have loved and thought—all whose being has been 
 steeped in spiritual association and passion. The 
 natural fact is to them inseparable from its moral 
 
 accessories of loss and misery. And the feeling is 
 
 \ 
 
 * Rom. v. 14; 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22, 55. 
 
164 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 irresistible which associates death with all our other 
 evil, and makes it seem, in all its painful accidents, 
 if not in its mere occurrence, as the consequence of 
 sin. Were there no darkness in our lives—did sin 
 not waste and ruin them—then death could hardly 
 be to us what it is. There would be no terror in it. 
 The gloom of it would vanish or be less oppressive. 
 It is this full meaning of the fact, even on its physical 
 side for moral creatures, that the apostle brings into 
 causal connection with sin. Death was what it was 
 to him and his fellow-Christians because of sin. The 
 final shadow rested on human life because that life 
 had turned itself away from God, and chosen the 
 evil rather than the good. 
 
 But if the apostle’s view of the consequences of 
 sin included death as an external fact, the special 
 meaning of the fact for him as for the older Scripture 
 writers was spiritual. It was the spiritual which 
 included the literal, and gave its deepest stamp to 
 the word, and not the reverse. The expressions 
 we have already quoted plainly indicate this. The 
 state of death which comes from sin as its immediate 
 consequence, was the state of those living around 
 him. It had been the state of the Ephesian and 
 Colossian brethren previous to their conversion. It 
 was so far the consciousness of all in whom the power 
 of the flesh was striving successfully against the law 
 of the mind, and bringing it into captivity to the 
 
DOCTRINE OF ST PAULS EPISTLES. 165 
 
 law of sin which is in the members.* Conceived in 
 this spiritual sense, death may be a passive or active 
 state. To be dead in sin is to be as yet in the mere 
 natural fleshly state in which the higher life has not 
 emerged, or the law been revealed—the state to 
 which we formerly adverted as the worst of all in 
 the apostle’s view, without God and without hope 
 in the world. This is spiritual death in its extreme 
 form, in which the moral nature has been so injured, 
 depressed, and weakened, that it is not conscious of 
 its injury. It is not there at all, in fact. The flesh 
 has destroyed it. The lower nature has not only 
 beaten down the higher nature, but so to speak dis¬ 
 possessed it, and reigns alone. There is no struggle, 
 therefore; all is stillness, but it is the stillness of 
 death. The true nature of the man, his moral 
 activity, has been killed. He is therefore appro¬ 
 priately described as “ dead in sin.” 
 
 But the state of conscious struggle which is also 
 depicted by the apostle, in which the higher nature 
 is alive yet ineffectually active in its conflict with 
 the flesh, is also “ death.” The apostle felt it to be 
 so in his own case. For he says, when the idea of 
 good first came to him in the commandment, sin 
 revived, and he died. “ Who shall deliver me,” he 
 cried, “from the body of this deatht”\ The more sin 
 is active or living within us, the more we are dead. 
 
 * Rom. vii. 23. + Rom. vii. 24. 
 
166 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 And if we are not utterly dead, if the moral life is 
 not gone in us altogether, but we are conscious of a 
 good at which we ought to aim—a law which de¬ 
 mands our service—%e shall have a corresponding 
 consciousness of fatal failure. We shall realise our 
 own moral prostration. We shall feel, in other 
 words, how far we have sunk from the ideal of our 
 lives, and lost the good we ought to have had, and 
 laid up for ourselves misery that we might have 
 escaped,—“ wrath against the day of wrath, and 
 revelation of the righteous judgment of God.” All 
 this experience is death to a soul in which there still 
 live any higher thoughts. Who has not known 
 such terrible moments—when we have been made 
 to possess our sins, and the iniquities of youth have 
 laid hold of us with the grip of death ; when the 
 consciousness of lost opportunities, and enfeebled 
 or wasted power, and the dreams of vanished good 
 have haunted us—and we have dwelt in darkness, as 
 them that have been long dead ? Ah, my friends ! 
 these are realities, let men theorise about sin as 
 they may. What men or women that you would 
 care to know have not felt something of them— 
 have not, in short, felt the sentence of death in 
 themselves, as they have thought of what they might 
 have done, or what they might have been, if they 
 had striven more steadfastly, and sought the strength 
 of God more carefully ? 
 
DOCTRINE OF ST PAUL'S EPISTLES. 167 
 
 This brings us to the last view of St Paul’s doc¬ 
 trine. Death, in so far as it is spiritual, is subjec¬ 
 tive. It is a state, that is to say, in man, whether 
 realised by him or not. But the word seems also 
 sometimes to point to the objective relation which 
 all sin bears to God, as when it is said that death, or 
 a state of condemnation, “has passed upon all men, 
 for that all have sinned.”* In any case, such an 
 objective relation of sin to the divine Holiness 
 and Justice is clearly expressed in the Pauline 
 Epistles. And the special name given to it is 
 sufficiently emphatic. It is called the “wrath of 
 God.”+ “ The wrath of God is revealed from heaven 
 against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” 
 “ Wrath against the day of wrath.” \ “ Because of 
 these things cometh the wrath of God upon the 
 children of disobedience.” § “ Among whom also 
 
 we all had our conversation in times'past, in the lusts, 
 of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of 
 the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, 
 even as others.” || These and many other passages 
 speak of our sin as not merely misery to ourselves, 
 but as offensive to God, and the object of His judi¬ 
 cial punishment. This is the special idea conveyed 
 —disobedience in us necessarily provokes judgment 
 in God. There can be no other relation between 
 
 * Rom. v. 12. + ’ Opy-fi Qeov. % Rom. i. 18, ii. 5. 
 
 § Eph. v. 6 ; Col. iii. 6. H Eph. ii. 3. 
 
168 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 human sin and divine righteousness but one of con¬ 
 demnation — of vindictive punishment, using the 
 words in their proper sense. This is a true element 
 of the Pauline doctrine, and, indeed, enters into the 
 very heart of it. Sin is not only death in us, but 
 deserves the sentence of death. It is under the 
 divine wrath and curse. And it would be ill with us 
 if it were not so. If God were not sure to punish 
 the evil, and to make it bear, so far as it remains 
 evil, the weight of His condemnation, the good 
 would lose for us its reality. Punishment may be 
 hard, but it lies not only in the nature of sin itself, 
 but in the nature of a holy divine Will that loves 
 righteousness and hates wickedness.* Such a Will 
 can only go forth towards sin in punishment of some 
 kind, and a righteous doom must rest upon it as its 
 due award in a righteous universe. But this subject 
 will receive fuller consideration in our next and final 
 Lecture. 
 
 * Psalm xlv. 7. 
 
ORIGINAL SIN. 
 
 169 
 
 VI. 
 
 ORIGINAL SIN. 
 
 In advancing to the doctrine of original sin, we are 
 still dealing with the Epistles of St Paul and with 
 the doctrine of St Paul. Our aim has been through¬ 
 out to trace the growth of the idea of sin to its full 
 consciousness in the primitive Church ; and St Paul 
 is the last expression of this consciousness. Within 
 the sphere of Revelation we do not reach any further 
 development of the doctrine, although still further 
 developments awaited it in the thought of the fifth 
 century, and in the later thought of Protestantism. 
 We have been so much in the habit of identifying 
 these later modes of thought with certain passages 
 in the Pauline Epistles, that it is difficult for us to 
 separate them. Such passages have so long spoken 
 with an Augustinian or Arminian voice, that we can 
 hardly read them without catching the argumentative 
 tone of the one or other. But such voices are the 
 afterthought of the Church heard in controversy, and 
 not the original voice of St Paul. It lies in the very 
 
170 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 principle of the historic method that we should try 
 to distinguish the original from the after thought, 
 and, as I said before, read always forwards instead 
 of backwards. 
 
 Deeply as St Augustine had drunk of the spirit of 
 St Paul, and closely kindred as they were in intellec¬ 
 tual and emotional nature, they were yet widely sep¬ 
 arated in time and circumstances. There is a great 
 interval of thought betwixt the first and the fifth 
 century, and a very changed atmosphere surrounds 
 the African Bishop from that which surrounded the 
 Apostle of the Gentiles. It is well for us to know 
 how St Augustine interpreted St Paul. No student 
 can probably understand the full meaning of the 
 latter who does not know something of the former: 
 yet Augustinianism is something quite distinct from 
 Paulinism. It had to deal with different questions 
 and different adversaries—with the Pelagian instead 
 of the Pharisee—with the full-grown Manichee in¬ 
 stead of the infant Gnostic. In the great conflict of 
 his day, against Manichaean and Pelagian opponents 
 alike, St Augustine was mighty through God in the 
 truth of St Paul. From the great apostle he drew 
 the strength of his convictions, and the weapons of 
 his warfare. He developed St Paul’s thought in 
 order to meet and confound the errors around him ; 
 and he did this with so much power, with such a 
 living insight into the profundities of that thought, 
 
ORIGINAL SIN. 
 
 I 7 I 
 
 and such a genius of intellectual and spiritual 
 authority, that he has left the impress of his theology 
 upon the Western Church until this day—surviving 
 alike the influence of the Reformation and the more 
 serious disintegration of modern criticism. The 
 Church of the West can never speak of St Augustine 
 in other words than those of reverence. But this is 
 no reason why we should only read St Paul through 
 his interpretations. The very dominance of his 
 influence should rather put us on our guard against 
 doing so. St Paul is too great a figure even to stand 
 behind St Augustine, and his thought in all its 
 bearings is to be caught if possible by the theological 
 student in its original freshness and life. It is diffi¬ 
 cult, no doubt, to do this. It cannot be done with¬ 
 out a special training. Standing as we do at the 
 end of a long line of controversial thought, it is hard 
 for us to get to the beginning and unwind the line 
 downwards. It is much easier for us to take the 
 end as the beginning, and not trouble ourselves 
 further. But this is to abandon Theology as a 
 science; and in such a case we had better let it 
 alone altogether. 
 
 In dealing further with the Pauline doctrine of sin, 
 or with that final aspect of it which is known as the 
 doctrine of Original Sin, it will not be possible alto¬ 
 gether to avoid points which owe their importance 
 to later theology—so much of this theology rises 
 
172 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 directly out of the heart of the apostle’s thought. 
 Still it will be our aim to keep here, as elsewhere, 
 close to our subject,—to steer as clear of controversy 
 as we can, and to fix our attention down to the 
 living features of the Pauline theology in itself. The 
 interest felt in these Lectures has been mainly owing, 
 as I fancy, to the manner in which I have sought to 
 look at the subject, and to trace the great and solemn 
 idea with which it is concerned along the fresh lines 
 of its development in the spiritual consciousness of 
 the race, rather than to make it a topic for polemical 
 argument, however well-intentioned. Controversy can 
 never cease in Theology any more than in other sub¬ 
 jects of inquiry ; and in it, more often than in many 
 other subjects, the thesis or the affirmative can only 
 be clearly seen and understood in contrast with the 
 antithesis or negative. Truth can only be made 
 bright in the face of error. Yet theological ideas 
 will only rise into the region of Science, and become 
 living ideas for all reverent intellects of whatever 
 Church, when they have been rescued by the labours 
 of many thinkers from the atmosphere of party con¬ 
 troversy, and set in the light of a comprehensive 
 inquiry into all the facts of that spiritual Order which 
 runs through human history ;—in other words, when 
 they are seen to be real growths of that spiritual 
 consciousness which is not only inseparable from 
 
ORIGINAL SIN. 
 
 173 
 
 Humanity, but which is its highest manifestation in 
 all times of healthy moral and intellectual progress. 
 
 In our preceding Lecture we dealt with the doc¬ 
 trine of St Paul in so far as it may be said to be a 
 doctrine of experience. Three special points occupied 
 us: ist, The universality of sin; 2d, The nature or 
 seat of sin; and 3d, Its effects or consequences. For 
 the proof of all these points St Paul appealed to ex¬ 
 perience. The universality of sin was no mere theory 
 or opinion of his, enforced by his authority. He 
 looked on the Gentile and the Jewish world alike, 
 and saw them “guilty before God.” The righteous¬ 
 ness or spiritual good for which man was formed— 
 his own conscience being the witness—was nowhere 
 realised. All had sinned and come short of that 
 glory of God, without sharing in which there could 
 be no human blessedness. This miserable conclu¬ 
 sion was clearly proved to him by the facts around 
 him ; and the facts were not, alas ! exceptional facts, 
 save in some darker features. Man is no less a 
 sinner at all points of his history than in the time of 
 St Paul. In explanation of the rise of sin in us, and 
 its nature, he no less appealed to experience. His 
 whole analysis of the “ flesh ” and the “ spirit,” and 
 again, of the “flesh” and the “mind,” and of the 
 conflict ever raging betwixt these higher and lower 
 elements of our being, was in the main an appeal to 
 
174 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 the experience of all in whom any higher life has 
 been awakened, who have risen from the death of 
 the mere nature-life to the consciousness of an Ideal 
 or a sense of duty, for which they ought to live—after 
 which they ought to aspire. And, lastly, in speak¬ 
 ing of the consequences of sin, he described these 
 as more or less experienced by all who yield to the 
 “ law of sin and death ” that is in their members. 
 The end unto death is one which sinners may or 
 may not realise in its fulness, but it is nevertheless 
 always a reality. The wages may be deferred, or 
 may not be consciously received ; but they are paid, 
 without stint, sooner or later. The fatal consequences 
 may not always equally appear, but they never fail 
 in some form or another. 
 
 f So far, therefore, the doctrine of the apostle may 
 be said to be a doctrine of experience. His analysis 
 is an analysis of spiritual facts, verifiable by you and 
 by me, and by all who have the same spiritual nature. 
 The facts may be denied. The apostle was quite well 
 aware of this. But that did not alter his estimate 
 of their reality. He had no doubt they would ap¬ 
 prove themselves whenever the voice of conscience 
 was heard in a man, or the power of any divine 
 Ideal taken hold of by him. This was enough for 
 him. The state of those who knew nothing of the 
 facts was out of account. It was a state worse than 
 the most bitter consciousness of sin, because it was 
 
ORIGINAL SIN. 
 
 175 
 
 one in which the true life of man, as distinguished 
 from his lower or mere animal life, had not yet 
 emerged. 
 
 1. But besides this doctrine of experience, there 
 is a further doctrine in St Paul—a philosophy of 
 the subject, which in part at least transcends experi¬ 
 ence. Sin is not only in human nature—the expres¬ 
 sion of that lower side of it which he calls the “flesh,” 
 —but it is an hereditary characteristic of it. Man 
 is born in sin. In one sense, this may be said to 
 be a mere truism. If man is composed of flesh as 
 well as mind or reason—if there is a lower carnal 
 life in all, and the only question is not as to the 
 experience of the lower but of the higher life—then 
 there can be no doubt that sin is an original ele¬ 
 ment of human nature. It comes to us by birth. 
 The universality of sin implies that sin is the out¬ 
 growth of original tendencies, and that man is a 
 sinner, not merely by the fact that he deliberately 
 chooses the evil rather than the good, but because 
 his nature is evil, or has inherited evil properties. 
 To this extent, the doctrine of original sin is a mere 
 generalisation from obvious facts. The mixed 
 impulses with which we come into the world bear 
 their natural fruit of good and evil. Not only so; 
 but, as it is the lower or animal side of human life 
 that may be said to grow first—to put forth its 
 shoots with most vigour in the beginning—it is inevi- 
 
176 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 table that the manifestations of our lower life should 
 show an early activity, and that evil rather than good 
 should spring up in the fertile soil. There is nothing 
 that can be said to transcend experience in such a 
 doctrine as this; nor is there anything in it that can 
 well admit of question on any hypothesis of human 
 origin and destiny. 
 
 That all individual men and women are what they 
 are of good or evil, in virtue not only of their own 
 individual acts, but of inherited tendencies which 
 have descended from a long antecedent past, is so 
 far an indisputable conclusion. No creature is, so to 
 speak, merely itself in the world. It is where it is, 
 or what it is, as the result of an indefinite advance 
 and appropriation of preceding forms of existence. 
 And this is true not only of the forms of animal life, 
 but of all organic forms, moral and intellectual as 
 well as animal. There is a continuous growth every¬ 
 where, and all share in this growth. All come forth 
 from the teeming bosom of the past. None stand 
 isolated or self-centred. Not to speak of the neces¬ 
 sary connection between the higher and the lower 
 nature of man—a connection which none can deny, 
 however strenuously they may resist the materialistic 
 interpretations drawn from it — intellectual and 
 moral life by themselves are seen to run along con¬ 
 tinuous threads, and to grow into what they are as 
 the result of many accessories. They are no more 
 
ORIGINAL SIN. 
 
 1 77 
 
 isolated than any other phenomena of nature and 
 of life. 
 
 The doctrine of hereditary corruption, therefore, 
 stating it merely as we are now stating it, is so far 
 from being contradictory to modern ideas, that it 
 may be said to be a direct corollary from the doc¬ 
 trine of evolution. Assuming that there is sin at 
 all in the world, or something answering to what we 
 call sin, it becomes a direct inference from the scien¬ 
 tific observation of facts, that sin has propagated it¬ 
 self from generation to generation and from race to 
 race. If it is a feature in humanity, it is a feature 
 which has come to us from our progenitors, and con¬ 
 tributed its share to make man what he now is. If 
 what we call corruption is universal, then it is neces¬ 
 sarily hereditary. For, in fact, there is nothing in 
 our human nature, or, for that part of the matter, in 
 nature anywhere, which is not so far hereditary. All 
 forms of life and activity have a lineage. They are 
 only what they are as the outcome of this lineage ; 
 and man, therefore, can only be a sinner because he 
 has come of a line of sinners, and the evil that is in 
 him has been passed over to him from those who 
 have gone before him. 
 
 2. But the doctrine of the apostle is something 
 more than this: it is something, indeed, very dif- 
 erent from this. His mind does not move on the 
 plane of inductive observation at all. He was a 
 
 M 
 
178 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 great master of facts within the spiritual sphere, a 
 psycholpgical analyst of no mean skill. He delights 
 to deal with the realities of our inward experience, 
 and to make the truth manifest in the sight of con¬ 
 science. But he would never have dreamt of looking 
 for any confirmation of his special doctrine in the 
 laws of the natural world. The natural world was far 
 less real to him than the spiritual,—and cosmic con¬ 
 ceptions had no place in his mind beside the religious 
 and scholastic conceptions in which he had been 
 bred as a Pharisee, and which were illuminated and 
 spiritualised, not extinguished, by his Christian cul¬ 
 ture. In his full explanation of the universality of 
 sin, therefore, he rises into a quite different atmo¬ 
 sphere, and travels beyond the range of ordinary 
 experience. Sin is with him not merely transmitted 
 to us, as all our qualities must be transmitted ; but it 
 comes to us by definite passage from the sin of Adam 
 as the prototype and representative of our race. His 
 idea of original sin is not simply the transmission 
 of sinful qualities from generation to generation by 
 the principle of natural inheritance. It is an idea 
 of spiritual injury and penal consequence inflicted 
 upon the race by the first sin, and directly imputed 
 to the race in consequence of that sin. This is the 
 doctrine which he lays down in two well-known 
 passages,* one of which in the fifth chapter of the 
 * Rom. v. 12 et seq.; 1 Cor. xv. 22. 
 
ORIGINAL SIN 
 
 179 
 
 Epistle to the Romans has long been a subject of 
 difficulty and controversy. 
 
 It may be urged, as some have done,* that too 
 much importance has been attached to these pas¬ 
 sages of St Paul. They form, after all, but a small 
 part of his writings—a few verses amongst thou¬ 
 sands. Yet the commentary on them has filled the 
 Christian world, and great parties in the Church 
 have waged around them an incessant strife. It 
 may be granted that Christian controversialists have 
 made too much of these detached portions of St 
 Paul’s writings. It is the bane of all controversy 
 to concentrate attention upon single points, and to 
 forget the connection of thought and doctrine in the 
 emphasis of these points. Texts have played an 
 unhappy part in the history of Theology, and led 
 men’s minds away from the balance and co-ordination 
 of Christian truth. This has come from a wrong 
 conception of Revelation, and is passing away with 
 the conception out of which it sprang. But, admit¬ 
 ting this, we may be sure that the instinct of the 
 Church has not been wrong in attributing vital 
 importance to the passages in question, and that 
 they bring before us very fundamental elements of 
 St Paul’s thought. His doctrine of original sin may 
 have been argued too endlessly in the Church, and 
 drawn out into conclusions which it will hardly bear. 
 
 * See remarks of Mr Jowett, Appendix XIX. 
 
l8o THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 But it is one of real moment in his whole system of 
 thought. 
 
 The passage in the Epistle to the Romans runs 
 as follows in our version: * “ Wherefore, as by one 
 man sin entered into the world, and death by sin ; 
 and so death passed upon all men for that all have 
 sinned. For until the law” (up to the time of giving 
 the law) “ sin was in the world ; but sin is not imputed 
 where there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned 
 from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not 
 sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, 
 who is the figure of him that was to come.” Fur¬ 
 ther, in the nineteenth verse : *J* “ As by one man’s 
 disobedience many were made sinners, so by the 
 obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” 
 The passage in the fifteenth chapter of the First 
 Epistle to the Corinthians is comparatively brief and 
 general : “ For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ 
 shall all be made alive.” % 
 
 The thought of the apostle in these and other 
 
 * Ata rouro llxrirep St’ evbs avdpdnrov rj apaprla els rbv Kiapov elariKOei /, 
 Kal Sta rrjs apaprlas 6 6d.va.Tos, Kal olirws els iravras dvdpwirovs 6 davaros 
 SirjAdev, etp’ ip iravres ijpaprov. "A xp<- yap vdpov apaprla ^v ev Koapcp, 
 apaprla Se ouk eWoyelrai pi) ovros vdpov. ’AAAa efiaalAevaev <5 Odvaros 
 card ’ASap p^XP 1 Mcoii aecus Kal eirl rods pi) apapr7)cravras eirl rip opoidpari 
 T 7 js irapafidaews ’ASdp, os ecrriv rviros too peAAovros. — Rom. v. 12-14. 
 
 i* "Clairep yap Sta rr/s irapaKorjs too evbs avOpwirov apaprwAol /career- 
 radijaav ol rroAAot, ovrcos Kal Sta rijs viraKoris rov evbs S'lKaiot Karacrra- 
 Qriaovrai ol iroWol .— Rom. v. 19. 
 
 + "Clcrirep yap ev rip ’ASap iravres diroOvi)(TKovGiv, ovrais Kal ev rep Xpiartp 
 iravres (uoiroiijdrjcrovrai. —I Cor. xv. 22. 
 
ORIGINAL SIN. 
 
 181 
 
 passages circulates around Adam on the one hand, 
 and Christ on the other, as centres of spiritual influ¬ 
 ence. The state of man before Christ, and the 
 state of man after—or of all who belong to Christ and 
 share in His redeeming work—is strongly contrasted. 
 Adam, as sinner, gives its character to the one; 
 Christ, as Saviour and the righteous One, gives its 
 character to the other. In the passage from the 
 Epistle to the Romans, sin and death are repre¬ 
 sented as the ruling powers in the world. Adam 
 is the source through which they have entered into 
 the world. Through his one act of sin, Adam not 
 only fell himself, but the line of spiritual integrity 
 was broken in him. The flaw extended to the 
 race. “ Sin entered into the world, and death by 
 sin ; and so death passed upon all, for that all have 
 sinned.” In other words, sin passed to us from 
 Adam, and death from sin. This is the simple, 
 meaning of the words as they stand in our version. 
 They might seem at first to add little to the doctrine 
 of hereditary corruption as generalised from the 
 facts of experience. But on a closer view they will 
 be found to add various features to this doctrine. 
 They emphasise the position of Adam as not merely 
 the first in a line of sinners, but as the type or repre¬ 
 sentative of the whole line—one whose act was fatal 
 not only for himself, but for all who followed him. 
 All mankind fell with him into the death which he 
 
182 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 had incurred, (a.) This typical character of Adam ; 
 (&.) the descent of spiritual depravity from him ; and 
 (, c .) the fatal character of the results which followed 
 not only for himself but for his posterity—in other 
 words, the judicial character of these results in their 
 downward passage—are all ideas more or less in¬ 
 volved in the passage. Let us look at them a little 
 more carefully, and see how far they are true ideas 
 of the apostle without special reference to the de¬ 
 ductions of later theology. 
 
 (a.) As to the first or the typical character of Adam, 
 there can be no doubt. This thought is plainly implied 
 in the passage as a whole, as well as in the passage 
 quoted from the fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle 
 to the Corinthians, and in other passages of the same 
 chapter.* It is a familiar thought of the apostle. 
 Adam was with him not only the first man histori¬ 
 cally, but the first man representatively. He stands 
 before all others not only in time, but in idea. He 
 is the earthly type, as Christ is the spiritual type, of 
 humanity. This contrast of typical relation is no 
 accident of the apostle’s thought. It is embedded 
 in it, and reappears constantly. There is a sense to 
 him in which mankind were summed up in Adam, 
 as believers are summed up in Christ. He has a 
 profound feeling of the unity of the race, and of this 
 unity Adam is a type or symbol. His act is there- 
 
 * i Cor. xv. 45, 47. 
 
ORIGINAL SIN 
 
 183 
 
 fore more than his own act. It has consequences 
 not merely of historical sequence, but of representa¬ 
 tive meaning. 
 
 (i h .) But the unity of the human race is with St Paul 
 no mere natural unity, or unity of external conditions. 
 He looks at man not from the outside, but from the 
 inside, and sees the race everywhere bound together 
 by inward links. It is true that it is the lower and 
 not the higher side of humanity that Adam repre¬ 
 sents and sums up. Christ is the representative of 
 the higher or spiritual side—the Lord from heaven. 
 But even man’s lower relations are inwardly appre¬ 
 hended. It is not merely natural dispositions that 
 have come from Adam—it is sin—an inward deprav¬ 
 ity—a will enfeebled for all that is good, and prone 
 to all that is evil. This inward view of the apostle 
 separates his thought from all mere physiological 
 considerations. These he neither denied nor affirmed. 
 They were out of his sight. When he speaks of man, 
 even on the lower or earthly side of his being, as 
 represented by Adam, he thinks of him as a being 
 under moral conditions and responsibilities. The 
 transmission of sin, therefore, is with him not a mere 
 accumulation of evil dispositions and tendencies, but 
 an injury in the will or moral power. 
 
 ( c.) This injury is characterised by him as death. 
 In our last Lecture we so far expounded the meaning 
 of this expression, and promised to return to it; and 
 
184 THE che/st/an doctrine of sin 
 
 it is in connection with this subject, or the conse¬ 
 quences of Adam’s sin, that the special difficulty 
 of St Paul’s doctrine arises. The full force of what 
 the apostle means by death is brought before us 
 in the two passages under consideration. It is the 
 dissolution of the inward life of righteousness, which 
 is alone the true life of all the true children of 
 God. But it is also more than this. It is a state of 
 condemnation, or of liability to punishment. The 
 presence of sin is not merely ruinous in us, but it 
 calls down the judgment of God. The “wrath of 
 God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness 
 and unrighteousness of men.” There can be no 
 other relation betwdxt our unrighteousness and the 
 righteousness of God but a relation of condemnation. 
 And this relation is passed over to men by the Fall. 
 
 And so death has passed upon all men, for that ” 
 '■( 1 $ <S) “ all have sinned.” 
 
 The precise meaning of these few words has been 
 vehemently contested. Do they imply merely, as 
 in our version is all their obvious meaning, that as 
 death followed the sin of Adam, so death follows the 
 sin of all ? All die, because all have sinned. Or 
 is the thought that death or condemnation follows 
 directly and universally the commission of Adam’s 
 sin, irrespective of personal sin ? Under the influence 
 of this last view Augustine translated the words, 
 “ in whom all have sinned ; ” and this translation has 
 
ORIGINAL SIN. 
 
 i8 5 
 
 passed into the Vulgate.* Instead of translating the 
 words conjunctively, as from the earlier times of the 
 Church they had been understood, and as they are 
 rendered in our version, he sought to find a subject 
 to the relative -f- in Adam as the first man. But no 
 modern scholar can be said to advocate this transla¬ 
 tion, which, moreover, yields a meaning at variance 
 with the context. For how does the apostle proceed 
 in his argument ? “ For until the law,” he says, or 
 
 up to the time of the law, “ sin was in the world; 
 but sin is not imputed when there is no law.” He 
 had stated that sin was introduced into the world by 
 one man, or by Adam’s transgression of the divine 
 law, and that death had followed sin, and passed 
 upon all. But an objection seems to occur to him 
 —If sin is always the transgression of law, what are 
 we to make of the period betwixt Adam and Moses, 
 when there was no positive law given to mankind ? 
 How could sin be reckoned against man when there 
 was no law ? He answers in the verses that follow : 
 “Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, 
 even over them that had not sinned after the simili¬ 
 tude of Adam’s transgression.” The evidence, there¬ 
 fore, that there was really sin in the world then, is 
 that death prevailed. It is true that sinners then were 
 
 * “In quo omnes peccaverunt.” See Appendix XX. for a more 
 special statement of Augustine’s views. 
 
 + <?. 
 
186 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 not sinners in the same sense as Adam. They did not 
 transgress a positive divine law as he did. But they 
 were none the less sinners. Although they had no 
 definite law or express divine command given them to 
 test their obedience, they had the law of reason and 
 of conscience. The voice of God might have been 
 heard in their hearts if they had listened to it. But 
 they failed to do this, and they sinned therefore, 
 although not after the similitude of Adam’s sin. He 
 does not explain all this. His reasoning is enigmatic 
 here, as in many other places; but this is clearly 
 his thought, as elsewhere expressed in the epistle. 
 The sufficient evidence to his mind of the presence 
 of sin in all the time from Adam to Moses is the 
 prevalence of death during this time. Death reigned 
 then as at other times. 
 
 It seems plain, therefore, that the apostle connects 
 death in every case with the personal commission of 
 sin. The death which has passed upon all men is 
 not merely a death on account of Adam’s sin, but on 
 account of their own sins. Death is everywhere the 
 evidence of sin. It implies sin ; and its universality, 
 therefore, is a proof of the universality of sin, just 
 as its prevalence during the period from Adam to 
 Moses was a proof that men were sinners then as at 
 all other times, although they were not living under 
 definite law. “ The apostle’s idea is, that sin as well 
 as death is universal, and that they are inseparably 
 
ORIGINAL SIN. 
 
 1 87 
 
 linked to each other. The universality of sin, how¬ 
 ever, is not so immediately and clearly apparent as 
 the universality of death ; and so it is inferred that 
 sin is universal from the fact that death is universal, 
 there being no death apart from sin, which is its 
 cause. The whole argument shows distinctly that, 
 though he sees in sin and death the operation of a 
 principle reigning in humanity since Adam, he yet 
 conceives the death of man to be essentially con¬ 
 nected with his own sin : ‘ Death came to all/ or 
 passed upon all, ‘because all have sinned/ The 
 coming of death, in other words, cannot be explained 
 except on the supposition that all have sinned. The 
 one always involves the other.” * 
 
 While on the one hand, therefore, death follows 
 from Adam’s sin, it is no less inseparably connected 
 in every case with personal sin. In other words, 
 while the punishment of Adam’s sin did not stay 
 with himself, but was diffused with the diffusion of 
 the sin which he initiated, it is not passed over by 
 itself merely. The true relation is—(1) Adam’s sin ; 
 (2) Our sin ; (3) Death cleaving necessarily to both. 
 But it may be said, Does not the death of infants, 
 who commit no actual sin, and who are yet subject 
 to death, imply the imputation of Adam’s sin to 
 them ? If death and sin are inseparable, is not their 
 death to be explained only by the fact that Adam’s 
 * Baur’s St Paul, ii. 185. 
 
188 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 sin and death are passed over to them ? Whatever 
 force there may be in such a view, it certainly derives 
 no confirmation from the present passage, which 
 distinctly asserts the personal presence of sin as the 
 cause or explanation of death. But what, then, of 
 the death of infants ? This, which was a puzzle 
 in the fifth century, cannot, in the same degree, 
 puzzle us, for reasons I have more than once ex¬ 
 plained. The dissolution of the physical system 
 is nowhere in St Paul nor in Scripture represented 
 as solely the result of sin. The death of Adam, the 
 death of sin, in St Paul, is always something more 
 than mere physical death. It may include the death 
 of the body—it does this plainly and prominently 
 in the passage before us—but it always includes 
 more; and, even when it refers to physical death, 
 it is not the decay of nature—the extinction of an 
 organism, which is the essential note of the word— 
 but the pain and misery and spiritual apprehension 
 which the decay, in the case of human beings, irre¬ 
 sistibly suggests. It is beyond doubt that death 
 itself, in the mere sense of decay, is inherent in all 
 organism ; that the conditions of life, in short, are 
 death; and that infant organic structures conse¬ 
 quently should die when weak, or imperfect, or 
 ready to vanish away, is no more remarkable than 
 that any other organism should perish. The mys¬ 
 tery of all life and death when we go beneath the 
 
ORIGINAL SIN. 
 
 189 
 
 surface, as we are incessantly prompted to do in the 
 case of human beings, is impenetrable. But on the 
 surface there is no more mystery in one case than 
 another. Death follows the exhaustion of living 
 tissue in young and old alike, and, as a mere natural 
 fact, is independent of moral conditions, or, at least, 
 nowhere solely follows them. 
 
 The physical death of infants, therefore, does not 
 require sin to explain it. And as to anything further, 
 we have no knowledge. The final fate of infants, 
 which perplexed Augustine’s mind, cannot perplex 
 ours. Of the meaning of death in the future, or 
 what is known as perdition, we have no call here to 
 speak. The reality that is in it comes from sin ; 
 it is the final punishment of sin. And those who 
 go down in darkness to dwell in misery outside 
 the Divine presence are receiving in the end wages 
 due to them. The thought is awful enough, and 
 may well make sinners pause before their feet 
 stumble, and the light pass from their eyes, and, 
 behold, there is only darkness. But it would not 
 only be awful, but horrible, if we supposed that this 
 dread reality awaited any life which had not here 
 come to moral consciousness, or known the choice 
 of good and evil. If we can be sure of anything 
 at all, we may be sure of this, that God will deal 
 with all as they have really done, rendering unto 
 every man according to his works. If there is any 
 
I90 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 moral truth at all, this is moral truth—that God will 
 act fairly, and that none will receive what they have 
 not deserved in their own doings. There is no prin¬ 
 ciple more frequently enunciated both in the New 
 and the Old Testament Scriptures. Whatever, 
 therefore, may be the consequence of Adam’s sin to 
 infants, we may be sure that they will not suffer for 
 these consequences. As they have not known to do 
 evil, they cannot have evil rendered to them. Their 
 fate may be beyond our scrutiny. An impenetrable 
 veil may rest upon it, and we may never be able to 
 lift it; but we take refuge in the sure truth, that 
 the Judge of all will do what is right, and that He 
 to whom we commit the child-life, which He has 
 mysteriously given and mysteriously taken away, is 
 “our Father which art in heaven”—whose face the 
 angels of little children continually behold * 
 
 But what, then, is the precise force of our relation to 
 Adam ? To what extent do we suffer for his sin ? 
 What is imputed to us in consequence ? The death 
 which is passed upon all men—what is it more par¬ 
 ticularly? We have already seen that the relation 
 of Adam to the sinful race which has proceeded 
 from him is typical. There is more in it to his pos¬ 
 terity than there is in the relation of any other man 
 to the race ; and this not merely because he was 
 first in natural order, but because the race was in a 
 
 * Matt, xviii. 10, 14. 
 
ORIGINAL SIN. 
 
 191 
 
 certain sense anticipated in him or summed up in 
 him. It admits of no doubt that this was one of the 
 governing ideas of the apostle’s mind. Whether we 
 make it any more clear by drawing it out according 
 to our own imperfect analogies, and turning the 
 mystery into a logical illustration, seems question¬ 
 able. But plainly it was in the mind of the apostle 
 that we suffer directly from Adam’s sin—not merely 
 in the loss of spiritual faculty and divine good which 
 we would otherwise have possessed—but in definite 
 punishment. God deals with the race judicially on 
 account of it, as a sinful race. As our ‘ Confession 
 of Faith’ has it, “ Our first parents being the root of 
 all mankind, the guilt of their sin was imputed, and 
 the same death, and sin, and corrupted nature con¬ 
 veyed to all their posterity.” * I am glad to be able 
 to quote these words for their own sake, and because 
 of their source. They are weighty and, upon the 
 whole, sober words ; and although they necessarily 
 take us away from the immediate atmosphere of 
 Scripture, they do not seem to me, rightly under¬ 
 stood, to exceed the fair meaning of St Paul. 
 
 The terms of the statement in the Confession 
 are deserving of particular attention. They speak 
 not of an imputation of sin—as many have done 
 unadvisedly—but of the guilt of sin. And the 
 distinction is an important one in theological lan- 
 * Westminster Confess, of Faith, c. vi. III. 
 
192 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 guage. The expression “ guilt ” has always had more 
 meanings than one, and the theological language 
 of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is only 
 intelligible when this is kept in view. When we 
 say that a man is guilty, we primarily mean that 
 he has really done the crime or evil deed imputed 
 to him. But when a person is pronounced guilty, 
 or has incurred guilt, we also mean that he has 
 become obnoxious to punishment. Here, as often 
 elsewhere, the meaning of a familiar word runs out 
 into a secondary and even a tertiary sense. First, and 
 properly, the word means personal ill-doing. If I 
 say to myself, “ I am guilty,” I accuse myself of a 
 wrong that I ought not to have done. The idea 
 is specially and prominently that of self-reference. 
 The evil I could not, or should not, I have done. 
 But the idea is also that of self-condemnation, or 
 the desert of punishment. I deserve to suffer for 
 what I have done. The two feelings are inseparable. 
 Conscious wrong-doing is at the same time conscious 
 condemnation. And every wrong-doer who has been 
 brought to a sense of his wrong will have the one 
 feeling as well as the other. And even if the wrong¬ 
 doer have no sense of his wrong, the fact that he 
 has committed a wrong, and that he deserves punish¬ 
 ment for it, is not altered in his case. Let the act 
 be carried home to him, and let it be proved that he 
 did it—that he was, as it is said, art and part in it— 
 
ORIGINAL SIN. 
 
 193 
 
 and he only deserves punishment all the more that 
 he has professed unconsciousness of the act, or 
 added falsehood to his folly or crime. In these two 
 meanings the proper or the moral sense of guilt is 
 summed up; and it would have been better, therefore, 
 that the use of the word had not been extended 
 further. But it has been extended in theological 
 language to the still further or tertiary sense of 
 liability to punishment as the consequence of wrong¬ 
 doing. The results of wrong accumulate and de¬ 
 scend, not only upon the offender, but upon all con¬ 
 nected with him. And the term “ guilt ” has been 
 passed over to denote this condemned state, or 
 state of punishment. 
 
 This is the only intelligible sense in which it can 
 be said that the guilt of Adam’s sin is imputed to 
 us * We did not personally participate in Adam’s 
 sin. We cannot be brought to feel that we did so, 
 or that we deserve punishment for having done so. 
 The race may deserve punishment inasmuch as it 
 was summed up in him as its representative, and 
 that in this sense it sinned and fell in him. There 
 are those who think that the apostle’s meaning is not 
 exhausted without this deeper view of this subject 
 which takes in the whole of humanity as bound up in 
 Adam—as a united whole in him, and dealt with as 
 a whole. His ill-deserving is therefore passed over to 
 
 * See Appendix XXI. 
 
 N 
 
194 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 all, although in the nature of things, or on the broad 
 ground of natural reason, that personal merit or de¬ 
 merit is incommunicable, it can never be brought 
 home to all. It must be admitted that the apostle’s 
 language is of a strongly realistic turn, and that he 
 conceives Adam and his race as, so to speak, iden¬ 
 tified in the divine view. This has been clearly 
 allowed in our exposition ; but it has been equally 
 clear that sin itself, and the ill-desert that comes 
 from it, as always personal, are not imputable. If 
 this extreme view, therefore, be maintained, it can 
 only be as a mystery—as something lying behind 
 the region of ordinary thought. The clear dictate 
 of conscience is, that we can only deserve ill when 
 we have done ill. 
 
 No one more clearly recognises this axiom of the 
 moral sense than the apostle himself. In the very 
 passage which has been more or less the basis of all 
 our thought in this Lecture, we have seen how clearly 
 he brings out death as always the consequence of 
 personal sin, and not merely of Adam’s sin. The 
 personal element is always emphasised by him, as by 
 all the Biblical writers, in connection with sin. It is 
 you and I who sin, and who will be punished for our 
 own sins. This broad moral commonplace, intelli¬ 
 gible by all, owned by all, runs through Scripture, 
 and is the great line upon which all its exhortations 
 and warnings turn. It seems hardly possible to 
 
ORIGINAL SIN 
 
 195 
 
 attach the conception of ill-desert to anything but 
 personal wrong-doing. It may be doubted if the 
 apostle ever intends to do this, realistic as is his con¬ 
 ception of humanity, and of the relation in which it 
 stands to the first man. 
 
 But neither can there be any doubt that he passes 
 over to humanity the state of condemnation or 
 obnoxiousness to punishment into which Adam fell. 
 That is to him a matter of fact. Adam’s sin is in 
 this sense guilt to all, that it brings punishment to 
 all. And if there is also mystery in this,—that a race 
 should be punished because the first man kept not 
 his first estate—if the moral sense is not without 
 difficulty here (there may be those who think the 
 difficulty hardly a step removed),—there are at least 
 also broad facts of experience that come in to help 
 us in facing this mystery. It is a fact, however 
 we may explain it, that guilt in this sense is imput¬ 
 able. The punishment of wrong-doing descends far 
 beyond the wrong-doer. Children are involved in 
 their parents’ shame. A family without any ill- 
 deserving suffers many ills, and even a sort of death 
 ) itself, from the criminality of its head. A nation is 
 plunged into misery, and reaps the reward of iniquity 
 through all its bounds, when its chief men stand 
 condemned at the bar of moral judgment, or have 
 plunged it into flagrant wrong. If it be true that 
 sin is always personal, and God will render unto 
 
196 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 every man according to his works, it is no less true 
 that all sin is diffusive, and carries with it a train 
 of endless consequences, many of them of a strictly 
 penal character. We may be sure we will not suf¬ 
 fer at last for anything that we have not done. In 
 point of fact, the question is a theoretical one for 
 all who have grown to know good and evil. “ If 
 we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, 
 and the truth is not in us.”* From the first dawn 
 of moral consciousness we have been conscious of 
 short-coming. Actual sin has become inextricably 
 interwoven in us with original sin, and we stand on 
 our own deserts before the bar of divine judgment. 
 We need not therefore trouble ourselves with the 
 question how far we shall be punished for the sins 
 of another, seeing our own sins are more than can 
 be reckoned up, and that we know in our hearts, if 
 we know anything, that no injustice will be done us 
 by Him who judges righteously. 
 
 It was necessary, all the same, that this deeper view 
 of the subject should come before us, and that we 
 should look at the question of sin not merely on its 
 personal, but, so to speak, its impersonal or original 
 side. Both sides must be taken together. If we look 
 at human nature merely in its historic connection, 
 we seem bound in a chain of external facts, which 
 leaves no room for personal freedom. The very idea 
 
 * 1 John, i. 8. 
 
ORIGINAL SIN. 
 
 I 9 7 
 
 of sin seems to vanish in its necessity. How can 
 man be blamable for what he cannot help—for that 
 which is the mere outcome of the nature which God 
 has given him ? If God has so connected us with a 
 sinful race, and so connected the race with its fallen 
 original,—then all seems His own doing. And having 
 made us what we are, how can He punish us that we 
 are no better than we are ? If we push the doctrine 
 of original sin as some have done, we end in the 
 subversion of sin altogether. But we look within, and 
 we know that, whatever may be our connection with 
 a given order of events which hold us in their de¬ 
 pendence, we are free to act—that if we sin daily, 
 we yet can help sinning—that even when temptation 
 is at its strongest we can turn away from it, and 
 choose that which is right and good. Nay, we know 
 that the Right and Good form the true law of our 
 being, to which we are truly bound, and not the 
 wrong or the evil which yet so often bind us. There 
 is that in us which is deeper than all sinful habit, 
 and which no force of '’original sin can overcome, if 
 only we give it free play. And if we do not do so,— 
 if we yield to the lower rather than to the higher— 
 to the evil rather than to the good,—we know that we 
 deserve to receive evil, and that punishment is our 
 due. All our experience is thus mixed. We are 
 bound, and yet we are free; we are sharers in original 
 sin, and yet we ourselves are sinners; inheritors of evil, 
 
198 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 and yet voluntarily evil-doers. We may be unable 
 to co-ordinate the two sides of our experience, but 
 this is no reason why we should not acknowledge the 
 one side as well as the other. 
 
 If we start merely from a single side of human 
 nature, it is easy to build up systems, and there are 
 minds which will always demand such systems. The 
 Theological Necessitarian has had his day in the past; 
 and, blind to the discrimination of moral facts, he 
 has drawn out his theory till it has covered the whole 
 field of Christian thought. It is now the high day 
 of the Materialistic Necessitarian, who is prepared to 
 explain all life—intellectual and moral as well as 
 physical—from microscopic germs up to its most 
 subtle and lofty developments. Such systems are 
 said to be rigorous and consistent, and to know what 
 they are about. They do not palter in a double 
 sense, or stand with trembling and agitated gaze on 
 the brink of mystery. All haze has gone from them; 
 almighty Power in the one case, and almighty Law 
 in the other, is made to solve all—to open the shell 
 of the universe and show its secret. The modern 
 system-monger seems quite as sure of this secret as 
 the most confident theologian of the ancient school. 
 He goes forth into the darkness with his naturalistic 
 law of evolution in his hand, and all seems to him to 
 fall into order. The great modern idea is to swallow 
 up all the thought of the past, and to bear humanity 
 
ORIGINAL SIN. 
 
 199 
 
 prosperously into a dim future without a soul and 
 without a God. But the facts of moral life are not 
 thus to be borne down. They spring up irrepressibly 
 from every attempt to merge them in some theoretic 
 principle which only explains them at the expense of 
 their reality. In this way they are not to be solved. 
 They claim to be heard for themselves, and to vindi¬ 
 cate their independence, however difficult it may be 
 to reconcile them with any preconceived theory. The 
 thinker, who feels bound to recognise both sides of 
 human experience—the moral and intellectual alike 
 —the spiritual and the scientific together,—who 
 shrinks from no discovery of science and no advance 
 in knowledge, and yet clings to the realities of the 
 inner life and the verities of a Divine order,—has a 
 hard time of it betwixt system-builders on the one 
 side and the other;—the bigotries of an omniscient 
 Science on the one hand, and the jealousies of an 
 omniscient Theology on the other. He is flaunted 
 by the one and suspected by the other. But the 
 moderation which refuses to affirm where the grounds 
 of affirmation are wanting, and is content to explore 
 and recognise facts of whatever kind, even where it 
 cannot co-ordinate them or bind them into a theory, 
 is at once the best note of science, and the surest 
 pledge of a theology that has some promise for the 
 future, as well as hold upon the past. 
 
200 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 And now I have done with these Lectures. It has 
 been to me a grateful surprise that so many should 
 have felt so true an interest in them. If I have said 
 anything that has helped or may yet help any to 
 think more truly of a great verity of our spiritual 
 nature, or of the verities of religious life and doc¬ 
 trine altogether, I have reason to thank God and 
 take courage. I have said nothing, I hope, in any 
 case, which can serve to lessen the solemn reality of 
 the great truth of which I have been speaking. I 
 have endeavoured to keep close to my task of scien¬ 
 tific exposition, and to allow as few jarring notes as 
 possible to enter from any side. This appears to me 
 —it has long appeared to me—the only useful mode 
 of treating Christian doctrine. 
 
 Let us, in conclusion, remember that the sin of 
 which I have been speaking is our own—your sin 
 and mine; and that if there is sin at all, it is neces¬ 
 sarily always misery. It bears its own doom with it. 
 But the Son of God “was manifested to take away 
 our sins, and in Him is no sin.”* His name is Jesus, 
 because “ He saves His people from their sins.” *f* 
 He has come into the world, “not to condemn the 
 world, but that the world through Him might be 
 saved.” + If we are conscious of the conflict of sin in 
 ourselves—if in our higher moments, when we are 
 ravished by the Good, we are yet held back by the 
 * i John, iii. 5. 
 
 t Matt. i. 21. 
 
 J John, iii. 17. 
 
ORIGINAL SIN. 
 
 201 
 
 Evil, and when we delight in the law of God, according 
 to the inward man, we yet find a law in our members 
 warring against the law of our minds, and bringing 
 us into captivity to the law of sin and death—let 
 us remember that there is One who is able to help 
 us, and who will not suffer us to be tempted above 
 what we are able to bear ; and let our prayer be—who 
 would not have the experience out of which such a 
 prayer springs, bitter though it be, rather than rest 
 in the deadness of sin ?—Save us, good Lord, and 
 bring us from all the weary and sinful struggle of this 
 mortal life to Thine own holy peace, and Thine 
 everlasting kingdom and glory. Amen. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
APPENDIX 
 

 
 
 
 
 k 
 
 , I 
 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 I. 
 
 (.Lecture /., page 8.) 
 
 THEOLOGY AND NATURAL SCIENCE. 
 
 Some more definite passage to the effect of what I have 
 here stated was running in my head when I wrote my 
 Lecture. But I have failed to verify it. The tone of 
 thought, however, which is implied in the text is not 
 uncommon, and may be sufficiently illustrated by the 
 following extract from one of David Hume’s Essays (“ Of 
 the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy,” in the ‘ Inquiry 
 concerning the Human Understanding’), with accompany¬ 
 ing comment by Professor Huxley. The extract and com¬ 
 ment are found in the close of Professor Huxley’s address 
 “ On the Physical Basis of Life ”—‘ Lay Sermons,’ &c., p. 
 150:— 
 
 “ ‘ If we take in hand any volume of divinity, or school 
 metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contam any 
 abstract reasoning concerning quantity and number ? No. 
 Does it contain any experimental reasofiing concerning matter 
 
206 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 of fact and existence ? No. Commit it then to the flames, 
 for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusions.’ 
 
 “ Permit me to enforce this most wise advice. Why 
 trouble ourselves about matters of which, however import¬ 
 ant they may be, we do know nothing, and can know 
 nothing? We live in a world which is full of misery and 
 ignorance; and the plain duty of each and all of us is to 
 try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat 
 less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was 
 before he entered it. To do this effectually, it is neces¬ 
 sary to be possessed of only two beliefs : the first, that the 
 order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an 
 extent which is practically unlimited; the second, that our 
 volition counts for something as a condition of the course 
 of events. Each of these beliefs can be verified experi¬ 
 mentally as often as we like to try.” 
 
 Nothing else, of course, of the nature of theological truth 
 —which neither concerns “ quantity and number,” nor yet 
 in Hume’s sense “ matter of fact and existence ”—can be 
 verified experimentally, and why then trouble ourselves 
 about what we can never know ? 
 
 II. 
 
 {Lecture I., page io.) 
 
 KANT’S RECOGNITION OF THE MORAL LAW. 
 
 “ Two things there are, which, the oftener and the more 
 steadfastly we consider, fill the mind with an ever-new, an 
 
APPENDIX: LECTURE I. 
 
 20 7 
 
 ever-rising admiration and reverence —the starry heaven 
 above , the moral law within. Of neither am I compelled 
 to seek out the reality, as veiled in darkness, or only to 
 conjecture the possibility, as beyond the hemisphere of my 
 knowledge. Both I contemplate lying clear before me, 
 and connect both immediately with my consciousness of 
 existence. The one departs from the place I occupy in 
 the outer world of sense; expands, beyond the bounds of 
 imagination, this connection of my body with worlds rising 
 beyond worlds, and systems blending into systems; and 
 protends it also into the illimitable times of their periodic 
 movement—to its commencement and perpetuity. The 
 other departs from my invisible self, from my personality; 
 and represents me in a world, truly infinite indeed, but 
 whose infinity can be tracked out only by the intellect, 
 with which also my connection, unlike the fortuitous rela¬ 
 tion I stand in to all worlds of sense, I am compelled to 
 recognise as universal and necessary. In the former, the 
 first view of a countless multitude of worlds annihilates, as 
 it were, my importance as an animal product, which, after 
 a brief and that incomprehensible endowment with the 
 powers of life, is compelled to refund its constituent matter 
 to the planet—itself an atom in the universe—on which it 
 grew. The other, on the contrary, elevates my worth as 
 an intelligence even without limit; and this through my 
 personality, in which the moral law reveals a faculty of 
 life independent of my animal nature—nay, of the whole 
 material world,—at least if it be permitted to infer as much 
 from the regulation of my being, which a conformity with 
 that law exacts; proposing, as it does, my moral worth for 
 the absolute end of my activity, conceding no compromise 
 of its imperative to a necessitation of nature, and spurning, 
 
208 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 in its infinity, the conditions and boundaries of my present 
 transitory life.”—Hamilton’s £ Lectures on Metaphysics,’ i. 
 39, 40. The passage is the first paragraph of the conclu¬ 
 sion (Beschluss) of the ‘ Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft,’ 
 and will be found in vol. viii. p. 312 of Kant’s ‘ Sammtliche 
 Werke’ (Leipzig, 1838). 
 
 III. 
 
 (.Lecture page 13.) 
 
 MODERN SCHOOL OF DUTCH DIVINES—DE ETHISCHE 
 
 RICHTING. 
 
 Holland has been during the last quarter of a century a 
 soil even more fertile than Germany in the fruits of theo¬ 
 logical learning and speculation. The critico-historical 
 labours of Kuenen and others are now well known in this 
 country by all interested in such subjects; but compara¬ 
 tively little as yet is known of the school to which I refer 
 in the text (spoken of in their own country as “ De 
 Modernen”)—who may be characterised as the extreme 
 left of the theological movement presently so active 
 in the churches and universities of Holland. The leaders 
 of this school are Dr Hooykaas, one of the compilers of the 
 ‘Bible for Young People,’ and an able young theologian 
 of the name of Van Hamel, who has sustained in the press 
 the chief part in defending and developing the views of 
 the ‘ Ethical Theory of Religion.’ I am indebted to an 
 accomplished young clergyman in our own Church, Mr 
 
APPENDIX: LECTURE I. 
 
 209 
 
 Menzies of Abernyte, who is well versed both in German 
 and Dutch Theology, for the following statement of the 
 views of these writers, translated and summarised from 
 articles which have appeared on the subject within the 
 last two years in the ‘ Theologisch Tijdschrift.’ 
 
 “Hooykaas* starts with saying, ‘God is—He acts—that 
 is a matter of experience. But suppose we have still to seek 
 Him, in what way are we to arrive at a knowledge of Him ? 
 Religion is a fact; but what are the contents of religion ? 
 Turning to history, we find that the gods whom men have 
 worshipped began with being material physical powers, 
 but have gradually come to be moral powers. Parsism, 
 Mosaism, Christianity, the New School in Holland, each 
 is a step in this direction. And not only so; but the 
 moral element has been the essence of religion all along. 
 Hence we are in sympathy with Isaiah or Augustine, 
 though our theology is radically different from theirs. 
 
 “ ‘ To us God is Holy Love. It is not His power but His 
 love that we worship. To us there is nothing adorable in 
 the Nature-God, the Ruler; we ourselves are superior to 
 all power. To us the Divine is what is holy, noble, exalted 
 —the Moral Ideal, in fact. 
 
 “ ‘The reason why religion thus proceeds from the material 
 to the moral, from the outward power to the spiritual 
 power, is just that the latter is the higher of the two, and 
 that as man grows he becomes fitter to appreciate and to 
 worship it. It is ever coming to us, this Moral Ideal, and 
 we grow capable of answering to its appeals. . . . 
 
 “ ‘ The moral power acts. We know that to be good is 
 better than to be bad. This is its action. Only the moral 
 
 * Theologisch Tijdschrift, March 1875. Dr I. Hooykaas, “Ter 
 Beschrijving van de Ethische Richting.” 
 
 O 
 
210 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 man can judge of this, however. To him who is seeking 
 earnestly to be good, the consciousness of the reality of 
 the moral law becomes so strong that he will rather doubt 
 the existence of the sensible than of the moral world. 
 Belief in the reality of moral ideas is the very essence of 
 religion.’ 
 
 “ Hooykaas insists again and again on the immediateness 
 of the knowledge of this power. ‘ It is not a conclusion 
 drawn from certain facts; it is the fact itself.’ ‘We know 
 God in so far as He reveals Himself to us. Of His essence, 
 of His existence, apart from that revelation, we know 
 nothing.’ In support of this position, he refers to the 
 unconscious suggestions of a higher life, of sympathy, of 
 enthusiasm for righteousness, of duty, which came to good 
 men. ‘ Not we,’ he says, ‘ took the first step—the Ideal drew 
 us to itself before we thought of it; we loved God because 
 He first loved us. The Ideal exists; it is not developed 
 out of humanity, but impresses itself on the consciousness 
 of humanity. At each step in the revelation, at each 
 advance in clear perception of the Ideal, we are aware that 
 we are not the producers but the recipients. . . . 
 
 “ ‘Your theory of the world may be anything you choose ; 
 that is quite apart from your religion. Ultimately, indeed, 
 your faith will mould your views on various subjects. It 
 will be impossible for you to believe that an evil power 
 created the world, or that the world, with all the achieve¬ 
 ments and the aspirations of millenniums, is doomed to 
 utter extinction. Faith in a God whom you thus imme¬ 
 diately know will also bias you in favour of an intuitive 
 theory of morals. . . . An atheist is not a man who denies 
 the existence of God, who rejects any particular conception 
 of what God is, nor even a man who denies the reality of 
 
APPENDIX: LECTURE I. 
 
 21 I 
 
 moral distinctions, and asserts that good and evil are alike 
 the will of God, but a man who practically denies the ex¬ 
 istence and authority of moral powers, and asserts in his 
 actions that there is no such thing as love, that self- 
 interest is the universal and the only rule, that sensual 
 desires have an intrinsic right to be satisfied, that money 
 is the supreme power and lawgiver in human society. 
 The conception of God matters very little; what is im¬ 
 portant is to have God Himself. There is no religion 
 without God; but there is religion without any concep¬ 
 tion of God. We point to ourselves as examples of 
 that fact.’ 
 
 “ Dr Hooykaas then goes on to argue that he has a right 
 to retain the name God and the word religion for this 
 position, although these terms have hitherto borne a totally 
 different significance. God, he asserts, means essentially 
 Higher Power, and more definitely an Invisible Supreme 
 Power, which claims and is worthy of our adoration; and 
 in this sense he can use the old word without any reserve 
 of the Moral Ideal by which good men are visited and the 
 human race drawn upwards. He enters then on a demon¬ 
 stration that this conception of God is the key to a proper 
 understanding of the Jewish prophets and of Jesus. In 
 this we need scarcely follow him, as we are all familiar 
 with an argument which is essentially the same. Dr 
 Hooykaas’ demonstration differs from Dr Matthew Arnold’s 
 in this, that the righteous power—Dr Arnold would say 
 which, Dr Hooykaas says whom —the prophets and Jesus 
 more and more vividly apprehended is with the Dutchman 
 a living, moving power, drawing near to the spirits of those 
 who were fit to know Him.” 
 
 The writer who has gone furthest of all in the identifica- 
 
212 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 tion of true religion with morality is Van Hamel,* who has 
 published in the ‘Theologisch Tijdschrift,’ an essay called 
 “ Religion without Metaphysics,” of which the following 
 are the principal points :— 
 
 “ He starts with the observation that theologians of the 
 new school have been turning more and more away from 
 the metaphysical element of religion, and seeking to 
 deduce the claims and the nature of religion from moral 
 phenomena. Some of us, he says, have followed this road 
 to its very end, and are now minded to detach religion 
 from metaphysics altogether—to consider it to be not a 
 view of the world, but a view of life, while we both describe 
 and preach it as moral idealism. . . . 
 
 “Van Hamel, also, goes first of all to history, as our 
 own countryman has done, to show that his religion is the 
 true religion of history—the essence that remains when 
 the accidental forms are stripped off. Religion, he main¬ 
 tains, has been everywhere and always essentially a view 
 of life, and then a view of the world, to which the view 
 of life, whatever it might be, gave rise. Every religion 
 is a philosophy—a theory of the world ; but this is not 
 the most important element of it: the root of the matter 
 has always been the view that was taken of life and its 
 phenomena. 
 
 “Supernaturalism, in fact, is not religion. It becomes 
 religion only when it is the expression of human needs. 
 Only when the higher world is regarded in its relation to 
 man’s own need, whatever that may be, do those senti¬ 
 ments and dispositions arise which we call religion. Only 
 when the man takes one or another of his ideals as the 
 
 * Theologisch Tijdschrift, September 1S74. A. G. van Hamel, 
 “ Godsdienst zonder metafysica. ” 
 
APPENDIX: LECTURE I. 
 
 213 
 
 standard of the history and government of the world, so 
 that it all subserves that ideal, and the gods work to 
 realise it, does his philosophy become more than an idle 
 imagination—does it become religion. And the main 
 element in this religion is not the supernatural theory of 
 the world—that is merely the formal side of it; the main 
 thing is the peculiar conception of life—the peculiar direc¬ 
 tion of wishes and expectations ; these are what confer 
 on a religion its distinctive character. Thus, when the 
 life is little more than material and sensuous, the gods 
 will be mere natural phenomena. As society is developed, 
 and the social instincts gain in power, the gods of the 
 family of the tribe—of the race—appear. Jahveh is, first 
 of all, the reflection of the national sentiment of Israel on 
 its ideal side. As moral life is developed, moral gods 
 appear, or those already in existence receive a more dis¬ 
 tinctly moral character. As life becomes more complex, 
 this complexity is reproduced in the forms of religion, and 
 we have polytheism. When one tendency becomes pre¬ 
 dominant, and other needs are thrown into the shade, 
 religion grows monotheistic. Monotheism may also be 
 the reflection of an impulse towards harmony—oneness 
 in life. 
 
 “ If this be a true account of the nature of religion, then 
 Christianity may properly be called Moral Idealism. It is 
 a religion in which neither sensuous life, nor national life, 
 nor social life, nor ecclesiastical life, but purely moral life, 
 is elevated to the ideal power, the highest element which 
 is most worthy of God. Jesus is conscious of a power 
 which carries Him irresistibly forward—is practically ab¬ 
 solute—makes Him the champion of all right against all 
 wrong—is ever close to Him, and fills Him with unspeak- 
 
214 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 able happiness. He loves this power—calls it the Father 
 in heaven. . . 
 
 “ As long as men are supernaturalists, they instinctively 
 elevate their ideals to the throne of the universe. Imagina¬ 
 tion refuses nothing that sentiment requires. His god, 
 man has no difficulty in supposing, rules heaven and earth 
 in the interests of his requirements—his ideals. The true 
 explanation of the universe is supplied by his life, or the 
 fortune and future of his nation, or the coming of the 
 kingdom of heaven of which he dreams. Thus, while 
 supernaturalism prevails, the view of life which is the 
 material of religion, is easily converted into a view of the 
 world, with which religion is then identified. 
 
 “ But take away supernaturalism, not only the older me¬ 
 chanical forms of it, but that notion of a Providence ruling 
 all things in the interest of the good, that is, for the realisa¬ 
 tion of our ideals, which is as much a form of supernatural¬ 
 ism as the belief in miracles,—take away all idea of a 
 purpose, an end, which things subserve; that is an unsci¬ 
 entific notion. It is thought to be the very essence of 
 Christianity—but this is not the case. Christianity is not 
 a theory of the course of affairs at all. Let us acknow¬ 
 ledge that nature goes her own way, and cares nothing 
 for our wants, and would not be nature at all if she did 
 otherwise. 
 
 “ Then is religion abolished? By no means. You have 
 still what is the essence of Christianity, though you have 
 lost the form—the view of life, the attitude in the practical 
 world, which Jesus introduced. We have still our moral 
 ideals. These are the only sources from which religion 
 springs, these alone give any religion at the stage in the 
 world’s history its substance and its authority. 
 
APPENDIX: LECTURE I. 
 
 215 
 
 “ Here our author finds it necessary to define further what 
 is meant by detaching religion from metaphysics, and call¬ 
 ing it a view of life and not a view of the world. He does 
 not deny the value of metaphysics in their own place ; only 
 he says they have nothing to do with religion, which is 
 based on facts, experiences, and not on theories. When 
 we call religion a view of life, we mean a way of taking 
 life, a direction of the life, not a theory of life. It is a 
 mode of grasping life practically. This can stand on its 
 own feet—it has no need of theories, which, after all, are 
 not the parents of religion but its children—which have 
 been invented to account for a thing that existed before 
 them, and can quite well continue to exist without them. 
 Reasoning can do nothing to increase the reality and au¬ 
 thority of the experiences from which religion springs; 
 they are original, and suffice for themselves. 
 
 “ And if it be asked, How do you know that your ideals 
 on which alone you base your religion are true, are real 
 things, and not merely your own subjective fancies, and if 
 they do not need some support from without before you 
 can place such implicit confidence in them? this leads 
 into the question of the basis of morality, and we do not 
 feel called upon to give a solution of it. We do not pre¬ 
 tend that our ideals supply us with absolute truth, but they 
 do supply us with what for us is the highest truth, and for 
 us at our present stage of culture they are absolute. They 
 are to be judged simply by their practical power. They 
 are not immovable—they come to us from the outside, 
 and what we call the highest is for ever changing. What 
 is the highest to-day may to-morrow have yielded to a 
 higher. But the highest while it is with us has an inde¬ 
 feasible claim to our devotion, a claim which reasoning 
 
216 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 did not give and which reasoning cannot take away. This 
 is not religion in the old sense, he frankly admits. If the 
 essence of religion reside either in supernaturalism or in 
 metaphysics, in the recognition of a real object of worship 
 or in the transcendent character of the universe, then there 
 is no religion here. . . . He asserts, however, that 
 
 the essence of what has been hitherto called religion is 
 here preserved.” 
 
 IV. 
 
 (.Lecture I., page 26.) 
 
 REVELATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE. 
 
 It is only an untenable idea of Revelation that can be 
 supposed at variance with the idea of the development of 
 Christian Doctrine. If we identify Revelation with its 
 record—in other words, with Scripture—then it might be 
 assumed that Divine truth was something absolutely fixed 
 in the text of Scripture (although even in this case the 
 truth would vary according to the different ways of inter¬ 
 preting it); but Revelation can only be rightly conceived as 
 a new force of spiritual light and knowledge communicated 
 to a spiritual intelligence. This force enters, like every 
 other force of knowledge and morality, into the higher cul¬ 
 ture of the race, and, from a supernatural point of view, is 
 the most powerful factor in advancing that culture. But it 
 works organically like other elements of human progress. 
 
APPENDIX: LECTURE I. 
 
 217 
 
 It is not a definite formula laid upon the human intelli¬ 
 gence, but a definite impulse communicated to it. 
 
 The Hebrew race were chosen by God to be the recipi¬ 
 ents of this higher spiritual knowledge; and through the 
 writings of the Hebrew prophets, who were the special 
 organs of Revelation, the Divine truth communicated to 
 them has been imparted to mankind in general. These 
 writings contain the Revelation, or are the record of it. 
 Their true purport is not to be gathered by a mere induc¬ 
 tion of texts or proof passages, but by a living and sym¬ 
 pathetic insight into the true spirit and structure of their 
 thoughts, and its organic relations with all the spiritual 
 thought of succeeding ages. The interpreter, in short, 
 must rise to the spiritual level of the prophets’ mind 
 (through the record which has been preserved of that 
 mind), and so reach the heart of the Revelation com¬ 
 municated to it. It is only in this way that what was 
 Revelation to the prophets can at the same time be Reve¬ 
 lation to us—Revelation in every case being, by its very 
 terms, not a dead letter, but a living light in the mind and 
 heart. 
 
 In this manner Revelation enters as a new and ever- 
 renewing factor into human thought, continually enlarging, 
 enlightening, and purifying it, and religious doctrine is the 
 ever-fresh product of this process of spiritual education. 
 It is the Divine truth originally communicated to the pro¬ 
 phetic mind—but which, just in virtue of its Divine 
 originality, has continued to grow in the spiritual con¬ 
 sciousness of humanity in connection with all the higher 
 elements of that consciousness; and so from time to time 
 has been moulded or translated into new forms of expres¬ 
 sion, adapted to new necessities, and in order to meet new 
 
218 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 forms of error. The idea of the development of Doctrine, 
 therefore, instead of being opposed to the idea of Revela¬ 
 tion, may be said to presuppose this latter idea, and to 
 rest upon it. The difficulty of discriminating what is 
 merely human, or as it is called “ natural,” in the product 
 from what is divine or “supernatural,” is an inherent diffi¬ 
 culty which no theory of Revelation can extricate, and 
 which is least of all got rid of by the theory which identifies 
 Revelation with its record, or supposes doctrine to be a 
 mere deduction from textual premises, or parts of the letter 
 of Scripture brought together in supposed logical order. 
 
 V. 
 
 (.Lecture II., page 29.) 
 
 NATURE AND EVIL. 
 
 The most remarkable indictment of Nature as a source 
 of evil rather than of good is to be found in Mr J. S. 
 Mill’s posthumous Essays, recently published. The pas¬ 
 sage is one which must be held to show the weakness 
 rather than the strength of the writer’s mind. It is steeped 
 throughout in that unconscious Anthropomorphism which is 
 the professed bane of the modern school—and yet so often 
 a distinctive note of their writings. Few men were more 
 deeply tinged with this spirit than Mr Mill—to the credit 
 of his earnest and deeply philanthropic character; and yet 
 while lavishing what can be called little else than abuse 
 upon Nature, in the interests of man, apparently he refused 
 
APPENDIX: LECTURE II. 
 
 219 
 
 to see in man himself anything but an outcome of the same 
 cosmic Forces which he so vigorously denounced :— 
 
 “ In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are 
 hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another, are Nature’s 
 everyday performances. Killing, the most criminal act re¬ 
 cognised by human laws, Nature does once to every being 
 that lives; and in a large proportion of cases, after pro¬ 
 tracted torture such as only the greatest monsters whom 
 we read of ever purposely inflicted on their living fellow- 
 creatures . . . Nature impales men, breaks them as 
 if on the wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, 
 burns them to death, crushes them with stones like the 
 first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes 
 them with cold, poisons them by the quick or slow venom 
 of her exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous 
 deaths in reserve, such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis 
 or a Domitian never surpassed. . . . She mows down 
 
 those on whose existence hangs the wellbeing of a whole 
 people, perhaps the prospects of the human race, for gene¬ 
 rations to come, with as little compunction as those whose 
 death is a relief to themselves, or a blessing to those under 
 their noxious influence. Such are Nature’s dealings with 
 life. Even when she does not intend to kill, she inflicts 
 the same tortures in apparent wantonness. In the clumsy 
 provision which she has made for that perpetual renewal of 
 animal life, rendered necessary by the prompt termination 
 she puts to it in every individual instance, no human being 
 ever comes into the world but another human being is 
 literally stretched on the rack for hours or days, not un- 
 frequently issuing in death. Next to taking life (equal to 
 it according to a high authority) is taking the means by 
 which we live; and Nature does this too on the largest 
 
220 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 scale and with the most callous indifference. A single 
 hurricane destroys the hopes of a season; a flight of lo¬ 
 custs, or an inundation, desolates a district; a trifling chemi¬ 
 cal change in an edible root starves a million of people. 
 The waves of the sea like banditti seize and appropriate 
 the wealth of the rich, and the little all of the poor, with 
 the same accompaniments of stripping, wounding, and 
 killing, as their human antitypes. Everything, in short, 
 which the worst men commit either against life or property, 
 is perpetrated on a larger scale by natural agents. . . . 
 Even the love of ‘ order/ which is thought to be a follow¬ 
 ing of the ways of Nature, is in fact a contradiction of 
 them. All which people are accustomed to deprecate as 
 ‘ disorder,’ and its consequences, is precisely a counter¬ 
 part of Nature’s ways. Anarchy and the Reign of Terror 
 are overmatched in injustice, ruin, and death, by a hurri¬ 
 cane and a pestilence,”—‘Three Essays on Religion,’ p. 28 
 et seq. 
 
 VI. 
 
 (.Lecture II, page 32.) 
 
 COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY. 
 
 It will be apparent to all students of comparative the¬ 
 ology how little I have ventured to touch the problems of 
 this science, although I have been deeply interested in it 
 for many years, in connection with my own special studies 
 in the historic development of Christian Doctrine. My 
 
APPENDIX: LECTURE II. 
 
 221 
 
 aim has been,—leaving aside all the difficult, and, as it ap¬ 
 pears to me, as yet insoluble questions, as to the chrono¬ 
 logy and external history of the great religions antecedent 
 to Christianity,—to sketch from the general substance or 
 contents of their thought the steps of advance on the 
 special question of Evil—a comparatively easy task, for 
 which there are abundant materials. The outward rela¬ 
 tions of the ancient Egyptian religion, or of the religions 
 of Western Asia, to the oriental faiths—Vedism, Brah¬ 
 manism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism,—and again of these 
 faiths to one another—especially the historical relations 
 of Vedism and Zoroastrianism,—are subjects quite be¬ 
 yond my powers to meddle with. The view of the latter 
 subject suggested in the text is that held by the most com¬ 
 petent inquirers, whose moderation of judgment and good 
 sense, as well as learning, excite the confidence of the 
 second-hand student on such matters. 
 
 The following brief statements,—the first from Bun¬ 
 sen’s ‘God in History’ (Miss Winkworth’s translation, 
 from which my quotations in the text are uniformly made), 
 and the second quoted in Max Muller’s ‘Chips from a 
 German Workshop,’ from a well-known Sanscrit scholar, 
 —speak for themselves :— 
 
 “The migration from Bactria to India took place, as 
 we shall see, anterior to the reformation of the Bactrian 
 faith by Zoroaster. The Vedic hymns themselves may 
 be in part coeval with that reformation ; but they are the 
 hymns of the ancient faith, which in the original parent- 
 land of the race was superseded, if not extirpated, by Zoro¬ 
 aster and their language is the most ancient monument of 
 the Bactrian consciousness.”—Bunsen, ‘ God in History,’ 
 i. 274. 
 
222 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 “ Professor Roth, of Tubingen, has expressed the mutual 
 relation of the Veda and Zend-Avesta under the following 
 simile : ‘The Veda,’ he writes, ‘and the Zend-Avesta, are 
 two rivers flowing from one fountain-head : the stream of 
 the Veda is the fuller and purer, and has remained truer to 
 its original character : that of the Zend-Avesta, has been in 
 various ways polluted, has altered its course, and cannot, 
 with certainty, be traced back to its source.’ ”—Muller 
 on the Zend-Avesta, ‘ Chips,’ &c., ii. 87. 
 
 VII. 
 
 (Lecture II ., page 33.) 
 
 SAVAGE NOTIONS OF EVIL. 
 
 The following illustrative passages are from Sir John 
 Lubbock’s well-known volume on the ‘ Origin of Civilisa¬ 
 tion and the Primitive Condition of Man ’ (3d ed.):— 
 
 “ The Hottentots, according to Thunberg, have very 
 vague ideas about a good Deity. ‘ They have much 
 clearer notions about an evil spirit, whom they fear, be¬ 
 lieving him to be the occasion of sickness, death, thunder, 
 and every calamity that befalls them.’ The Bechuanas 
 attribute all evil to an invisible god, whom they call 
 Murimo, and ‘ never hesitate to show their indignation at 
 any ill experienced, or any wish unaccomplished, by the 
 most bitter curses.’”—P. 212. 
 
 “ The Abipones of South America, so well described by 
 Dobritzhoffer, had some vague notions of an evil spirit, 
 
APPENDIX: LECTURE II. 
 
 223 
 
 but none of a good one. The Coroados of Brazil ‘ac¬ 
 knowledge no cause of good, or no God, but only an evil 
 principle, which . . . leads him astray, vexes him, brings 
 him into difficulty and danger, and even kills him.’ ”—P. 
 213. 
 
 “ When Burton spoke to the Eastern negroes about the 
 Deity, they eagerly asked where he was to be found, in 
 order that they might kill him; for they said, ‘ Who but 
 he lays waste our homes, and kills our wives and cattle ? ’ ” 
 —P. 214. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 {Lecture II., page 38.) 
 
 APOLLO. 
 
 These, amongst other attributes and characteristics of 
 Apollo, are very clearly brought out in Mr Gladstone’s 
 admirable paper on “ Homerology : I.—Apollo,” in the 
 ‘ Contemporary Review ’ for March 1876. 
 
 We quote a few sentences specially with reference to 
 the Messianic functions attributed to Apollo in relation to 
 Zeus :— 
 
 “ 1. He alone of the active gods is in entire and un¬ 
 varying conformity with the will of Zeus, and is his mes¬ 
 senger and agent for the most important purposes. 
 
 “ 2. He alone of male deities has the title Aios mos, son 
 of Zeus. 
 
224 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 “3. He alone of male deities is termed Ad' <£ iAos, dear 
 to Zeus, and is addressed by him as </uA.€ Qolfie. 
 
 “4. He alone shares with Zeus (II. xiii. 154) the title of 
 
 6e WV djptCTTOS. 
 
 “ 6. Apollo is the defender of Heaven against rebel¬ 
 lion.” 
 
 IX. 
 
 (.Lecture II., Rage 50.) 
 
 BRAHMA. 
 
 Referring to a passage which he quotes from the first 
 book of the ‘ Sama-Veda,’ Bunsen says :— 
 
 “ Here we have the portentous word which divides the 
 India of the Ganges from that of Indus, and in general the 
 later religious consciousness of India from the Irano-Aryan. 
 But we have by no means the noun masculine Brahma , 
 the supreme god of the Brahmans, who are his priests. 
 We have the neuter Brahma , an abstract noun, belonging 
 entirely to the ideal world; which has its tangible roots in 
 no historical tradition, but rather in a thoroughly exter- 
 nalistic treatment of the ancient Yedic sacrificial rites. 
 According to Haug, it would appear from his researches 
 into the Aryo-Zendic remains that the word Brahma ori¬ 
 ginally signified the strewing of the sacrificial grass on the 
 spot appointed for the immolation, or the contemplation 
 of this holy work, from which it was extended to the con- 
 
APPENDIX: LECTURE III. 
 
 225 
 
 templation of every holy act. Here we find the stepping- 
 stone to the objective meaning according to which the 
 neuter Brahma, as an abstract noun, denotes the Divine, 
 the Godhead; philosophically therefore the Absolute, Un¬ 
 conditioned, Eternal, which is placed in opposition to the 
 temporal, the phenomenal, the imperfect, and conditioned.” 
 —Bunsen’s ‘ God in History,’ i. 319. 
 
 X. 
 
 (.Lecture III., page 67.) 
 
 NARRATIVES OF THE CREATION AND OF THE FALL. 
 
 It is a well-known commonplace of modern criticism 
 that the primary creation narrative (Gen. i.-ii. 3), and the 
 narrative beginning with the fourth verse of the second 
 chapter to the end of the third chapter, are from different 
 sources. 
 
 “The book of Genesis was not written by one man, but 
 was put together from works of very different dates ; works, 
 too, whose authors by no means all stood upon the same 
 religious level. This very chapter will furnish us with 
 illustrations of the fact, for immediately after the first 
 account of the creation, a second follows, which by no 
 means agrees with it. . . . The same writer” (who gives 
 the second account of creation) “ continues his narrative, 
 and tells us how Paradise was lost.”—‘ The Bible for 
 Young People, by Dutch Divines’ (translation), i. 52, 58. 
 
 Of the question as to how these and other sections of 
 
 P 
 
226 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 Genesis are related to one another, Oehler says (Old Test. 
 Theology, i. 74): “ I certainly consider that the present 
 shape of Genesis arose by the re-editing of an Elohistic 
 narrative, and the interpolation of Jehovistic passages. 
 But, at the same time, it must appear improbable that the 
 author would place at the head of his work two contra¬ 
 dictory accounts of the creation.” 
 
 XI. 
 
 {Lecture III., page 91.) 
 
 NATIONAL IMPORTANCE OF THE HEBREW PROPHETS. 
 
 “Their [the Jewish] religion, gave existence to an ines¬ 
 timably precious unorganised institution, the Order (if it 
 may be so termed) of Prophets. Under the protection, 
 generally though not always effectual, of their sacred char¬ 
 acter, the prophets were a power in the nation often more 
 than a match for kings and priests, and kept up in that 
 little corner of the earth the antagonism of influences which 
 is the only real security for continued progress. Religion, 
 consequently, was not there—what it has been in so many 
 other places—a consecration of all that was once estab¬ 
 lished, and a barrier against further improvement. The 
 remark of a distinguished Hebrew, that the Prophets were 
 in Church and State the equivalent of the modern liberty 
 of the press, gives a just but not an adequate conception 
 of the part fulfilled in national and universal history by 
 this great element of Jewish life; by means of which, the 
 
APPENDIX: LECTURE III. 
 
 227 
 
 canon of inspiration never being complete, the persons 
 most eminent in genius and moral feeling could not only 
 denounce and reprobate, with the direct authority of the 
 Almighty, whatever appeared to them deserving of such 
 treatment, but could give forth better and higher interpre¬ 
 tations of the national religion, which thenceforth became 
 part of the religion. Accordingly, whoever can divest 
 himself of the habit of reading the Bible as if it was one 
 book, which until lately was equally inveterate in Chris¬ 
 tians and in unbelievers, sees with admiration the vast 
 interval between the morality and religion of the Penta¬ 
 teuch, or even of the historical books, and the morality 
 and religion of the Prophecies,—a distance as wide as 
 between these last and the Gospels. Conditions more 
 favourable to progress could not easily exist; accordingly 
 the Jews, instead of being stationary, like other Asiatics, 
 were, next to the Greeks, the most progressive people of 
 antiquity, and, jointly with them, have been the starting- 
 point and main propelling agency of modern cultivation.” 
 —J. S. Mill’s ‘Representative Government,’ p. 41. 
 
 XII. 
 
 (.Lecture III., page 96.) 
 
 HEBREW PROPHECY AND THE QUESTION OF EVIL. 
 
 The following is the passage from Kuenen’s ‘ Religion 
 of Israel ’ alluded to in the text. It appears to me ex¬ 
 pressed in far too general terms, and to ignore altogether 
 
228 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 some of the deepest elements of the prophetic teach¬ 
 ing 
 
 “ The older Israelitish prophets and prophetic historians 
 had not hesitated to derive even evil, moral evil not ex¬ 
 cepted, from Jahveh : the belief that Jahveh directed all 
 things was so strong in them, that they did not recoil from 
 the consequence. Even the second Isaiah—perhaps with 
 an eye to, but yet at variance with, the Persian dualism 
 with which he was acquainted—had put these words into 
 Jahveh’s mouth :— 
 
 ‘ I form the light and create darkness, 
 
 I make peace and create evil; 
 
 I, Jahveh, do all these things.’ 
 
 But it is not unnatural that objections to this conception 
 should have arisen in the minds of some. Jahveh’s moral 
 purity seemed to them to be not uninjured by being thus 
 made the immediate cause of sin. The remedy was at 
 hand. Anro-Mainyus was not unknown to the Jews, and 
 Satan stood ready as it were to undertake his part.”— 
 Kuenen’s ‘ Religion of Israel ’ (translation), iii. 40. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 (.Lecture IV., page 109.) 
 
 THE ESSENES AND THE INFLUENCE OF DUALISTIC SPECULA¬ 
 TION IN PALESTINE IN THE FIRST CENTURY. 
 
 The following abbreviated extracts from Dr Lightfoot’s 
 recent essay on “ The Colossian Heresy ” bear out what is 
 said in the text:— 
 
APPENDIX; LECTURE IV. 
 
 229 
 
 “The Essene is the great enigma of Hebrew history. 
 Admired alike by Jew, by Heathen, and by Christian, he 
 remains a dim, vague outline. . . . And yet, by careful 
 
 use of the existing materials, the portrait of this sect may 
 be so far restored. . . . The Essene was exceptionally 
 rigorous in his observance of the Mosaic ritual. . . 
 
 His respect for the law extended also to the lawgiver. 
 After God, the name of Moses was held in the highest 
 reverence. He who blasphemed his name was punished 
 with death. In all these points the Essene was an ex¬ 
 aggeration, almost a caricature, of the Pharisee. . . . 
 
 “To the legalism of the Pharisee, the Essene added an 
 asceticism which was peculiarly his own, and which in 
 many respects contradicted the tenets of the other sect. 
 The honourable and even exaggerated estimate of mar¬ 
 riage which was characteristic of the Jew, found no favour 
 with the Essene. Marriage was to him an abomination. 
 
 . . . But his ascetic tendencies did not stop here. 
 
 The Pharisee was very careful to observe the distinction of 
 meats lawful and unlawful, as laid down by the Mosaic 
 code, and even rendered these ordinances vexatious by 
 minute definitions of his own. But the Essene went far 
 beyond him. He drank no wine, he did not touch animal 
 food. . . . Again, in hot climates oil for anointing 
 
 the body is almost a necessary of life. From this, too, the 
 Essenes strictly abstained. . . . 
 
 “ From these facts it seems clear that Essene abstinence 
 was something more than the mere exaggeration of Phari¬ 
 saic principles. The rigour of the Pharisee was based on 
 his obligation of obedience to an absolute external law. 
 The Essene introduced a new principle. He condemned 
 in any form the gratification of the natural cravings, nor 
 
230 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 would he consent to regard it as moral or immoral only, 
 according to the motive which suggested it or the conse¬ 
 quences which flowed from it. It was in itself an absolute 
 evil. He sought to disengage himself, as far as possible, 
 from the conditions of physical life. In short, in the as¬ 
 ceticism of the Essene we seem to see the germ of that 
 Gnostic dualism which regards matter as the principle, or 
 at least the abode, of evil. . . . 
 
 “An esoteric doctrine, relating to angelic beings, may 
 have been another link which attached Essenism to the 
 religion of Zoroaster. . . . 
 
 “This Jewish sect exhibits the same exclusiveness in 
 the communication of its doctrines. Its theological specu¬ 
 lations take the same direction, dwelling on the mysteries 
 of creation, regarding matter as the abode of evil, and 
 postulating certain intermediate spiritual agencies as neces¬ 
 sary links of communication between heaven and earth. 
 And lastly, its speculative opinions involve the same ethical 
 conclusions, and lead in like manner to a rigid asceticism. 
 If the notices relating to these points do not always explain 
 themselves, yet read in the light of the heresies of the 
 apostolic age and in that of subsequent Judseo-Gnostic 
 Christianity, their bearing seems to be distinct enough; 
 so that we should not be far wrong if we were to designate 
 Essenism as Gnostic Judaism. 
 
 “ The Essenes of whom historical notices are preserved 
 were inhabitants of the Holy Land. Their monasteries 
 were situated on the shores of the Dead Sea. We are told, 
 indeed, that the sect was not confined to any one place, 
 and that members of the order were found in great num¬ 
 bers in divers cities and villages.”—Lightfoot on Colos- 
 sians and Philemon, p. 82 et seq. 
 
APPENDIX: LECTURE IV. 
 
 231 
 
 XIV. 
 
 (.Lecture IV, page 122.) 
 
 DR J. MULLER ON LOVE TO GOD, AND SIN AS ITS OPPOSITE. 
 
 J. Miiller, in his well-known elaborate treatise on ‘ The 
 Christian Doctrine of Sin,’ has worked out at length the 
 idea of sin as selfishness, or the antithesis of love to God. 
 I agree with those who think (Dr Hodge, ‘Syst. Theol.,’ 
 
 ii. 149, and others) that Muller has made too much of this 
 idea, in trying to reduce all forms of sin to selfishness as 
 their essence; but I cannot mention this earnest and rich- 
 minded theologian without expressing the obligation which 
 I owe to the study of his great work on the subject of my 
 Lectures. I am sensible that trains of thought derived from 
 it long ago (when I made it a special study, and introduced 
 it to the knowledge of many English readers, probably for 
 the first time, in the ‘ British Quarterly Review,’ Nov. 1851) 
 still linger in my present exposition of the subject—differ¬ 
 ent as my point of view now is. The reader may find 
 some evidence of this in the following brief extracts :— 
 
 “ Love is the inmost soul of all moral ordinances; and 
 all deep reverence for law, all obedience to a higher will, 
 all those sacred energies which hold human life together, 
 and confine its activity within accurately-defined spheres, 
 are only love in disguise; and, like the Old Testament law 
 in the history of the human' race, these when defined and 
 embodied in the life of the individual are TraiSaywy ol (Gal. 
 
 iii. 24) for the kingdom of love revealed. Love can take 
 root only in the soil of earnest strictness; true liberty can 
 
232 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 germinate only beneath the closely-enveloping sheath of 
 self-limitation and submission to law. 
 
 “ But love can only become the generative principle of 
 a higher life when it makes itself manifest in its true 
 character. It does not show itself in its fulness until it 
 becomes conscious of God as its absolute object, and 
 of all its other objects in their true relation to Him. 
 Thus is the heavenly magnet found which is able, not 
 for the passing moment of enthusiastic excitement only, 
 but continually, to guide and sustain the life of man over 
 the dark mysterious sea in which the powers of the deep 
 and the burden of its own sins and sorrows ever tend to 
 sink it. . . . 
 
 “ But sin is not only the absence of love to God; for 
 with the negation of our true relation to Him there is the 
 affirmation of a false one. Unbelief in the true God and 
 the revelation of His holiness always involves a contrary 
 belief, if it be only in the sufficiency of one’s own critical 
 and sceptical understanding. Upon the disappearance of 
 the divine principle, there immediately ensues the entrance 
 of a principle opposed to God, according to the saying of 
 Christ, ‘ He who is not with me is against me.’ Man 
 cannot abandon his true relation to God without setting 
 bp an idol in God’s stead. . . . 
 
 “ The idol which man in sin sets up in the place of 
 God can be none other than himself. He makes self and 
 self-satisfaction the highest aim of his life. To self his 
 efforts ultimately tend, however the modes and directions 
 of sin may vary. The innermost essence of sin, the ruling 
 and penetrating principle in all its forms, is selfishness. 
 
 “ Man must be a personal being—an ego —if he be cap¬ 
 able of holy love; and if he excludes holy love from his 
 
APPENDIX: LECTURE IV. 
 
 233 
 
 inner life, his natural self-love degenerates into selfishness, 
 the disease of self, the corruption of self-love.”—Muller’s 
 ‘Christian Doctrine of Sin,’ i. 115, 131, 134. 
 
 XV. 
 
 {Lecture IV., page 132.) 
 
 AUGUSTINE AND CALVIN ON HUMAN CORRUPTION. 
 
 The expressions in the text are to be found in the 
 second book of Calvin’s ‘Institutio Christianae Religionis :’ 
 the first, in the close of the second chapter of that book, 
 being a quotation from Augustine (De Verbis Apost., 
 Serm. 10)—“ Nostrum nihil nisi peccatum ; ” and the 
 second being the title of the third chapter of the same 
 book. I am quite aware that both these modes of expres¬ 
 sion are capable of a strictly evangelical interpretation ; or, 
 in other words, that there is a sense in which they may be 
 said to be in consistency with our Lord’s teaching. And 
 I am far from. attributing to Calvin especially a lack of 
 balance and comprehensiveness of judgment in dealing 
 with the question of sin. No one can read the two 
 chapters to which I refer without seeing that this would be 
 doing Calvin injustice (as, indeed, injustice is often done 
 to his special views). In the very same chapters, for ex¬ 
 ample, he freely allows a good side in human nature, or at 
 least an undestroyed power of distinguishing good and evil 
 (“ ratio, qua discernit homo inter bonum et malum ”—L. 
 II. c. ii. § 13)—even a power of virtue (“ ad virtutis studium 
 
234 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 facultas”), conspicuously illustrated in such men as Camil- 
 lus (L. II. c. iii. § 4). Calvin is seldom deficient in com¬ 
 prehensiveness of intellectual judgment. But he is none 
 the less narrow, and sometimes unfair in tone. Neither 
 he nor Augustine can frankly admit that what is good in 
 human nature is after all really good. Admitting, for 
 example, the external virtue of such a natural man as 
 Camillus, he yet asks, “What if his mind was depraved, 
 which it must have been if he was only a natural man ? ” 
 (ibid.) In other words, there is a back-lying theory of 
 human depravity which colours, in both these theologians, 
 all their estimates of human life and character. Dog¬ 
 matic abstractions are constantly obtruding upon their 
 line of thought, and giving a direction to it very different 
 from the broad and fair representations of the Gospels, 
 where everything stands for what it really is of good or 
 of evil, without any distorting and confusing effects of 
 abstract theory. The tone is different in the two cases. 
 This is all that is meant by the observation in the text. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 (Lecture V., page 140.) 
 st Paul’s view of law. 
 
 Speaking of St Paul’s definition of the word “law,” 
 Reuss, in his ‘ History of Christian Theology in the Apos¬ 
 tolic Age,’ says:— 
 
APPENDIX: LECTURE V. 
 
 235 
 
 “ Primarily, this word signifies, purely and simply, the 
 law of Moses as contained in the Pentateuch, or even a 
 particular article of that law. 
 
 “The Jews, however, had already in their common 
 speech extended the circle of this notion, and designated 
 by the term law the entire Old Testament, less in the 
 literary sense—according to which the prophets were added, 
 to complete the idea of the volume—than in the theo¬ 
 logical sense, all the other books being thus regarded as 
 corollaries of the Mosaic legislation. It may be boldly 
 affirmed that in most of the passages in which Paul makes 
 use of the word law , it is in the historical or literary sense ; 
 the allusion is to the Old Testament as a whole, not to 
 the Pentateuch in particular: on this account the term has 
 most frequently that which was called in the old theology 
 the economic signification—that is, it stands for the entire 
 Old Testament economy.”—P. 33, 34. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 (.Lecture V., page 155.) 
 
 CONFLICT OF THE FLESH AND MIND. 
 
 The following is part of Neander’s exposition of this 
 subject:— 
 
 “ When the law in its glory, the moral archetype, first 
 revealed itself to the higher nature of man, he was filled 
 with earnest desire to seize the revealed ideal; but this 
 
236 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 desire only made him more painfully sensible of the chasm 
 which separated him from the object after which he 
 aspired. Thus, what appeared at first a blissful ideal, by 
 the guilt of death-producing sin, became changed into its 
 opposite. The higher nature of man aspiring after a freer 
 self-consciousness, is sensible of the harmony between 
 itself and the divine law, in which it delights; but there is 
 another power, the power of the sinful principle striving 
 against the higher nature, which, when a man is disposed 
 to follow the inward divine leading, drags him away, so 
 that he cannot accomplish the good by which alone his 
 heavenly nature is attracted. In the consciousness of this 
 wretched disunion, he exclaims, ‘ Who shall deliver me 
 from this power of sin ? ’ . . . 
 
 “ By the opposition between the inner man and the law 
 in the members or the flesh, Paul certainly does not mean 
 simply the opposition between spirit and sense; for if the 
 spirit were really so animated by the good which is repre¬ 
 sented in the law, as it ought to be, according to its original 
 nature and destination, its volitions would be powerful 
 enough to subordinate sense to itself. . . . He therefore 
 intends by these terms to express the opposition between 
 the depressed higher nature of man, and the sinful prin¬ 
 ciple which controls the actions of men.”—Neander’s 
 ‘ Hist, of the Planting and Training of the Christian 
 Church,’ Bohn’s translation, p. 431, 432. 
 
APPENDIX: LECTURE V. 
 
 237 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 (.Lecture V., page 158.) 
 
 SIN.—CONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN. 
 
 The following are the statements referred to in the 
 text:— 
 
 “ The answer to this question,” says Baur, “ lies in the 
 undeniable truth, that sin is what it is essentially and 
 simply through man’s consciousness of it; where there is 
 no consciousness of sin, there is no sin.”—Baur’s ‘ St Paul,’ 
 p. 141. 
 
 “ In the apostle’s language, consciousness is presupposed 
 in the sin itself; not reflected on it from without. That 
 which gives it the nature of sin is conscientia peccati. As 
 Socrates, a little inverting the ordinary view and common 
 language of mankind, declared all virtue to be knowledge; 
 so the language of St Paul implies all sin to be the know¬ 
 ledge of sin. Conscientia peccati peccatum ipsnm est. . . . 
 If, from the apostle’s ideal point of view, we regard the 
 law, not as the tables given on Mount Sinai, or the books 
 of Moses, but as the law written on the heart, the difficulty 
 is, not how we are to identify the law with the conscious¬ 
 ness of sin, but how we are to distinguish them. ... In 
 the language of metaphysical philosophy, we say that ‘ the 
 subject is identical with the object;’ in the same way sin 
 implies the law. The law written on the heart, when con¬ 
 sidered in reference to the subject, is simply the conscience. 
 The conscience, in like manner, when conceived of objec¬ 
 tively, as words written down in a book, as a rule of life 
 which we are to obey, becomes the law. For the sake of 
 
238 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 clearness we may express the whole in a sort of formula. 
 ‘ Sin = the consciousness of sin = the law.’ From this last 
 conclusion the apostle only stops short from the remem¬ 
 brance of the divine original of the law, and the sense that 
 what made it evil to him was the fact that it was in its own 
 nature good.”—Jowett’s ‘Comm, on Epistle to Romans,’ 
 P- 5 ° 4 , 5 ° 5 - 
 
 XIX. 
 
 {Lecture VI., page 179.) 
 
 DOCTRINE OF IMPUTATION OF SIN. 
 
 Mr Jowett’s remarks on this subject, to which we have 
 alluded in the text, are deserving of quotation. There is 
 force in what he says, and a much-needed caution, as to the 
 tendency of theologians to generalise widely, and draw 
 large propositions from a few Scriptural data—sometimes 
 little more than “ figures of speech.” But, all the same, the 
 line of thought concentrated in the two special passages 
 to which he refers, and which form the basis of our Sixth 
 Lecture, is essentially Pauline. The ideas involved in 
 the passages, and the contrasts drawn in them betwixt 
 Adam and Christ, enter into the heart of the apostle’s 
 thought, and cannot be explained away as mere rhetorical 
 exaggeration. 
 
 “ That so many opposite systems of Theology,” he says, 
 “ seek their authority in Scripture, is a fair proof that Scrip¬ 
 ture is different from them all. That is to say, Scripture 
 
APPENDIX: LECTURE VI. 
 
 239 
 
 often contains in germ what is capable of being drawn to 
 either side; it is indistinct where they are distinct; it pre¬ 
 sents two lights where they present only one; it speaks 
 inwardly, while they clothe themselves in the forms of 
 human knowledge. That indistinct, intermediate, inward 
 point of view at which the truth exists but in germ, they 
 have on both sides tended to extinguish and suppress. 
 Passing allusions, figures of speech, rhetorical oppositions, 
 have been made the foundation of doctrinal statements, 
 which are like a part of the human mind itself, and seem 
 as if they never could be uprooted, without uprooting the 
 very sentiment of religion. Systems of this kind exercise 
 a constraining power which makes it difficult for us to see 
 anything in Scripture but themselves. 
 
 “For example, how slender is the foundation in the 
 New Testament for the doctrine of Adam’s sin being im¬ 
 puted to his posterity !—two passages in St Paul at most, 
 and these of uncertain interpretation. The little cloud, no 
 bigger than a man’s hand, has covered the heavens. To 
 reduce such subjects to their proper proportions, we should 
 consider: First, what space they occupy in Scripture; 
 secondly, how far the language used respecting them is 
 literal or figurative; thirdly, whether they agree with the 
 more general truths of Scripture and our moral sense, or 
 are not ‘ rather repugnant thereto ; ’ fourthly, whether 
 their origin may not be prior to Christianity, or traceable 
 in the after-history of the Church ; fifthly, whether the 
 words of Scripture may not be confused with logical infer¬ 
 ences which are appended to them ; sixthly, in the case of 
 this and some other doctrines, whether even poetry has 
 not lent its aid to stamp them in our minds in a more 
 definite and therefore different form from that in which the 
 
240 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 apostles taught them ; lastly, how far in our own day they 
 are anything more than words.”—Jowett’s ‘ Comm, on 
 Epistle to Romans, p. 180, 181. 
 
 XX. 
 
 {Lecture VI., page 185.) 
 
 augustine’s translation of l <\> <S (Rom. v. 12).— 
 
 HIS VIEWS ON “ ORIGINAL SIN.” 
 
 Augustine’s version of this phrase is found abundantly, 
 as elsewhere, in his treatise ‘ De Peccatorum meritis et 
 remissione,’ which, he says (Retract, ii. 23), he was “ com¬ 
 pelled to write against the new heresy of Pelagius.” Deal¬ 
 ing with his own translation— in quo omnes peccaverunt —he 
 applies the “ quo ” sometimes to “ peccatum ” and some¬ 
 times to Adam —“ ille unus homo ”—forgetful, apparently, 
 as Migne points out in a note, that <0 could not agree 
 with a/xaprta—(Migne’s ed., x. 115). All modern scho¬ 
 lars may be said to unite in the statement of Baur that, 
 “ grammatically, icf> <5 cannot be taken in any other sense 
 than 4 because,’ ” or, as he expands the meaning, “ the 
 fact being that; ” or again, Alford (in loc .), “ on condition 
 that.” 
 
 In the same treatise (L. III. c. iv.), Augustine discusses 
 the question of original sin in relation to infants, and 
 shows how plainly his whole views on this subject were 
 dependent on his High Church or sacramentarian views as 
 to the efficacy of baptism, and the consequent necessity of 
 
APPENDIX: LECTURE VI. 
 
 241 
 
 all infants being baptised in order to their salvation. His 
 argument is as follows : Unless infants receive the benefit 
 of the sacrament they are manifestly in danger of damna¬ 
 tion. But damned they cannot be without sin. Now, 
 since they have no sin of their own (“ in vita propria ”), it 
 is necessary for us to credit them with original sin,—how¬ 
 ever unintelligible the mystery. It is enough to state this 
 argument to show how entirely Augustine’s tone of thought, 
 on this as on many other matters, is removed from a modern 
 or rational point of view. A fiction of sacramental efficacy 
 is made the basis of an absurd argument. The name of 
 Augustine, as I have said in the text, must always be held 
 in respect; he possessed a profound spiritual nature and 
 many noble qualities; but either as a writer or a thinker, 
 there are few men who should be followed more cautiously. 
 And never, certainly, should we allow the great apostle to 
 speak to us only through his voice. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 (.Lecture VI, page 193.) 
 
 THEOLOGICAL MEANING OF GUILT. 
 
 I could have wished to collect an induction of passages 
 in proof and illustration of the statement in the text, 
 but it may be enough in the meantime to appeal to the 
 following statements in confirmation of what I have said. 
 
 Q 
 
242 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN 
 
 Dr Hodge’s authority as a Calvinistic theologian will 
 hardly be disputed. 
 
 “ To impute sin, in Scriptural and theological language, 
 is to impute the guilt of sin. And by guilt is meant not 
 criminality, or moral ill-desert, or demerit, much less moral 
 pollution, but the judicial obligation to satisfy justice. 
 Hence the evil consequent on the imputation is not an 
 arbitrary infliction, not merely a misfortune or calamity, 
 not a chastisement in the proper sense of that word, but a 
 punishment— i.e., an evil inflicted in execution of the pen¬ 
 alty of law, and for the satisfaction of justice.”—Hodge’s 
 ‘ Systematic Theology,’ ii. 194. 
 
 “ The venerable Assembly’s Catechism, in answer to the 
 question, Wherein consists the sinfulness of our estate by 
 nature, says, ‘ In the guilt of Adam’s sin,’ &c. Now, as 
 guilt is blameworthiness—desert of punishment; and as 
 the compilers of that generally excellent compendium of 
 faith cannot well be supposed to have intended to intimate 
 that we are really blameable for an act performed by 
 Adam,—they must have used the word in the general sense 
 of legal liability, or obnoxiousness to punishment. This is 
 the sense in which it is used by all theologians in this 
 country, and in America, except by the few who identify 
 the race and its parent. To be guilty of Adam’s sin is to 
 be exposed by it to punishment— i.e., to the endurance of 
 its consequences. Still the phrase is objectionable, since, 
 though the endurance of its consequences was punishment 
 to Adam, it is not so to us. The constitution established 
 with him was such as to expose us to the results of his 
 •conduct ; but that exposure, or liability, is not guilt in any 
 proper sense of the term, or in common parlance even, 
 
APPENDIX: LECTURE VI. 
 
 243 
 
 nor should it ever be so called. The child of a profligate 
 parent is liable to disease, but he is never thought of as 
 guilty. The term guilt always supposes personal trans¬ 
 gression, except in technical theology, from which we 
 would banish it.”—Payne’s ‘ Lectures on Original Sin,’ p. 
 79, 80, note. 
 
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