H 03 The Principle of Sin

3. The Principle of Sin.

Having thus ascertained with some degree of certainty what is the vital principle of moral goodness or holiness, we are in circumstances to answer the question for the sake of which this inquiry was entered upon, viz. what is the prin ciple of sin in the heart of man? The answer to this must be, that as sin is the antithesis of holiness, and as the principle of holiness is love to God, the principle of sin must be the negation of this the absence of love to God, or estrangement of heart from Him. It is not necessary that this should amount to positive hatred of God; it is enough that the heart be destitute of supreme love to God, having no complacency in His holy character, no delight in His favour, and no desire for His glory. With this accords the lesson which the apostle teaches in Romans 1:21-23, where he traces all the degeneracy of the heathen world, all its idolatry and deep moral degradation, to an alienation of heart from God. They began their course of evil by being irreverent and unthankful, not glorifying God as God, withholding from Him that admiration, adoration, and love which the infinite perfection of His character demands, and refusing that grateful acknowledgment of His mercies which the multitude and graciousness of these mercies justly claim. And having this alienation of heart from God, they naturally did not like to retain God in their knowledge, and hence, says the apostle, it is that they were given up to a reprobate mind, and fell under the sway of all those unhallowed influences which gradually immersed them ever deeper and deeper in the foul abyss of sin and uncleanness. It was not that they had not the knowledge of God, it was not that they could not retain that knowledge, it was simply and solely because they did not like to retain it, that they lost it, and so were led to change the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things, and were left to become the prey of all lawless lusts and passions and desires. Like a ship which had lost its rudder, they were driven helplessly whithersoever the winds and waves of passion or evil example carried them.

I prefer regarding the principle of sin as simply alienation from God, or want of holy love to God, to attempting the determination of any positive tendency or feeling in which it may be supposed to consist. It is true that we thus rather lay down a negative than establish a positive principle of action; but this, instead of being regarded as an objection, is rather perhaps to be looked upon in the light of a recom mendation, inasmuch as sin being in itself rather a negative than a positive state, just as darkness is the mere negation of light, and cold the mere negation of heat, the principle appropriate to it is rather a negative than a positive one.

Those who have sought to fix a positive principle of sin have either concluded on selfishness, i.e. The undue love of self, or on creature-love, i.e. The undue estimation of any created objects, ourselves included, so as to prefer them to God, or to withhold from God that which belongs to Him. Now, that both selfishness and undue attachment to the creature are sinful is at once conceded, but whether either can be pro perly regarded as constituting the positive principle of sin may be more than doubted.

If we were required to choose between these two views, the latter certainly appears the preferable, not so much because it includes the former, as because it avoids an objection to which the former is exposed. For if all sin be resolved into selfishness, we must either conclude that every act of man is a selfish act, or hold that there are some acts which man in his fallen state can perform that are without the stain of sin. Of this alternative the advocates of the selfish school would accept the former side; for by them it is maintained that all the acts of man are either directly or indirectly, either grossly or by a more refined process, the results of selfishness; and in this conclusion some who do not professedly belong to the selfish school in ethics seem inclined to concur. But against such a doctrine the moral consciousness of man revolts, and it is one which will not abide the test of facts. It is no doubt true that pleasure attends the performance of that which we desire to perform, and that sometimes we act purely for the pleasure resulting from the act. But is it not pre posterous to affirm that we ahcays so act, that the child, for instance, who for the first time in its existence comes in contact with sorrow, and desires to relieve it, does so not from a natural sympathy, but from a refined calcula tion as to the selfish pleasure to be derived from the relief of the suffering, that the mother who sacrifices ease, health, perhaps life itself, for her babe, is all the while only seeking a refined self-gratification, that the man who at the call of friendship imperils his liberty, his property, his reputation, his life, rather than desert the cause of one to whom he is attached, is not moved by any generous principle, but is all the while only offering incense at the shrine of self-love? To maintain such a position would be to read human nature backward, and to contradict some of the strongest convic tions of the human heart. We all know and are sure that there are other principles of action by which we are swayed than selfishness. We know that we often desire the happi ness of others, without the slightest thought of any reaction from the gratification of that desire of a pleasurable kind upon ourselves. Indeed, the very fact that we desire pleasure from the gratification of the desire, shows that the desire must have existed as a generous and unselfish emotion ante cedent to the performance of the act. For suppose I relieve the wants of one in poverty or suffering, either the generous desire to do that person a kindness prompted me, or I was, as the selfish school teach, induced thereto solely by a desire to enjoy a personal gratification. Let us suppose the latter. In this case it follows that I had no generous desire to relieve another previous to the act. Whence then, I ask, the grati fication derived from the act? Who does not see that if there be any gratification derived from the act it must be because that act gratified a desire to relieve the distressed, and that this and not any calculation of selfish gratification was the motive prompting to the act? This selfish system, then, contains in itself its own confutation: on its own showing the antagonist doctrine is correct. As a matter of psychological science, then, we cannot resolve all our actions into selfishness. It follows from this that if selfishness be the essential principle of sin, and if, conse quently, no act can be regarded as sinful which cannot be traced directly to selfishness, many of the acts of man even in his fallen state, and whilst at enmity with God, must he regarded as sinless; nay, it would follow that whatever love and reverence man withheld from God, if he only did not expend that upon himself, but bestowed it generously on his fellow-creatures, he would nevertheless be innocent of sin in this. With such a conclusion our Lord’s doctrine, that we are to love God with our wliole heart and strength and mind, is, as we have seen, clearly incompatible. It must therefore be at once rejected, and with it the doctrine that selfishness is the essential principle of sin. The more general principle that the essence of sin, or moral evil, lies in the undue love of the creature in general, is not exposed to any such objection as this. It has consequently been that principally embraced by theologians. 1 I am never theless inclined to think that this may, with greater propriety,

1 "Hoc enim peccabam quod non in ipso, sed in creaturis ejus, me atque ceteris, voluptates, sublimitates, veritates quoerebam.; atque ita irruebam in dolores, confusiones, errores." Augustin, Confess., lib. 1:31.

"Propter universa haic et hujusmodi peccatum admittitur, dum immoderata in ista inclinatione cum extrema bona sint, meliora et summa deseruntur, tu Domine Dens noster, et veritas tua, et lex tua." Ibid., lib. 2:10.

" Animum enim peccati arguimus cum eum convincimus, superioribus desertis, ad fruendum inferiora prsepoiiere." Augustin, De lib. arbit., 1:3; 100:1. be regarded as a primary result or manifestation of this prin ciple rather than the principle itself. Man must love some thing; he is destitute of the supreme and all-embracing love of God; he therefore turns from the summum lonum to the minus lonum; he gives to the creature what is due only to the Creator. This perversity, however, is not itself a primary principle of action; it has a cause in the antecedent alienation of heart from God; and in this therefore would we place the principle and vital source of sin. This estrangement from God will come into conscious manifestation as soon as the will of God comes into collision with any of the lusts and passions of our nature. As love to God will show itself most evidently in the ready and joyful submission of the human will to all that God enjoins or appoints, so the absence of this will display itself most naturally in resistance and repugnance to the divine will. The first and most immediate effect of it is in producing a state of untruthfulness, of error, and darkness, and wrong judging in the mind. Men alienated from the centre of truth and light become immediately darkened in their minds and given up to vain imaginations, so that they put good for evil, and evil for good. A further step in this downward course is to put the creature in the place of the Creator, and at the head of all creatures to place self as the supreme object of devotion. Hence, though to resolve all men’s actions into selfishness be false philosophy, it remains an undoubted fact that of the positive sins which men commit nearly all may be resolved into some form or other of selfishness. The dominant principle in man becomes his emotional nature, and that in itself alone, unregulated by sound judgment and reason. As the apostle describes it, " Lust, when it hath conceived, bringeth forth sin " (James 1:15). This is the true genesis and history of evil in our world. This serving of self and of the creature may exist to a large extent without any conscious aversion of the mind from God. But this arises not from any real love lurking in the heart to the source of all good; but simply because the mind has the power of abstracting from all thoughts that are un pleasant to it, and hence, not liking to retain God in its knowledge, simply ejects the thought of God altogether from the circle of its ideas and feelings. Hence the Bible represents men in their natural state as not so much haters of God as simply without God aOeoi, not avrideoi as those that forget God in all whose thoughts God is not. But though there may not be a conscious repugnance of mind to God, all the while a process is going on which is increasing the native alienation of the heart from God, arid which needs only some occasion of collision between the man’s lusts and God’s expressed will to bring it forth in all the odiousness of full-grown hatred and hostility to the Most High. And as the principle of sin is thus ungodliness, so the great end which Christianity aims at accomplishing in man is the restoration to man’s heart of that great regulative prin ciple of his moral nature, that great fontal source of all real goodness in man, love to God. The consummation of Christianity in a man is when in life he lives unto the Lord, and in death dies unto the Lord, that whether living or dyinghe is the Lord s, so that through eternity he shall be wholly and for ever with the Lord.