14. THE EFFECTS OF PROSPERITY

namely, that man's evil nature is due to his evil surroundings, and that if the surroundings be improved the man will improve, has been already sufficiently tested in human experience to demonstrate its falsity to all who care to know the truth in this regard. In every "civilized" country there are, and for many generations have been, favoured groups of individuals who are "surrounded," and have been all their lives, with all the favouring influences that wealth can procure. So far, however, from having developed ideal characters, it is, on the contrary, observable that these conditions tend to develop, in those who are most fully exposed to their influence, the traits of selfishness, extravagance, idleness, immorality, self-indulgence, excesses, pride, and the like. Surely, if experience teaches anything, it teaches that prosperity and "easy circumstances" do not tend to develop—much less do they automatically produce—ideal characters. As a means of getting rid of sin and its consequences, industrial progress is already a demonstrated failure.

It is important, in this connection, to have regard to the simplest and broadest definition of sin which Scripture furnishes, namely, "Sin is lawlessness" (1 John iii. 4, R.V.). Sin is that lawless state or condition of man consequent upon his departure from God's plan and his embarkation upon a career of his own choosing. It is the substitution of another will—"the will of man," or "the will of the people"—for that of God, Whose will is "good, acceptable, and perfect" (Rom. xii. 2). The resulting state is necessarily one of disorder, confusion, uncertainty, ignorance, and corruption, and an environment abounding in evils, violence, accidents, disease, and death.

If, for example, the germ theory of disease be correct, it furnishes an apt illustration of lawlessness. According to that theory, diseases are caused by living organisms which, having escaped from the control of law, have got out of their own proper place, and have colonized in human bodies. These living things may be not merely harmless, but even beneficent, in their proper place; but in a state of sin, that is to say of lawlessness, they become displaced, and propagate their own species by the destruction of organisms much higher in the scale of life.

Our ordinary experience furnishes abundant examples of things which, in their proper relations to other things, are useful and beneficial, but which become hurtful and destructive when dislocated or misapplied.

Nothing, therefore, can be more certain than that the results of sin, which is lawlessness, and of which the chief result is death, can not be removed except by the putting away of sin itself. In no other way can man and the world be brought back into harmony with God, or be, as the Bible expresses it, "reconciled to God" (2 Cor. v. 19, Col. i. 20), Who is the

PUTTING AWAY SIN

Author of law and order, not of confusion (1 Cor. xiv. 33).

This work of putting away sin, breaking the power of death, and reconciling the world—persons and things—to God, is the work of Christ on the cross (Heb. ii. 14, 15, ix. 26; Rom. v. 10; 2 Cor. v. 18, 19; Col. i. 20). "He appeared to PUT AWAY SIN by the sacrifice of Himself" . . . "that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil." Here is the only plan ever proposed for removing sin and death from God's universe. It is God's plan, and is therefore effective; and though it does not meet the approbation of the advanced theologians and religious leaders of the day, the latter have not as yet furnished a substitute. God's way of salvation for humanity has at least this to commend it, that it deals directly and by name with the great enemies, sin and death, which have exercised dominion over all the race of Adam. Man's religions, on the other hand, have nothing to say against these mighty foes, and disclose no way whereby a single human being can escape from their grasp.

Scripture teaches that "when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son" (Rom. v. 10); so that we have in Scripture a clear statement of God's plan, which He is now carrying out, for the deliverance of the world from all lawlessness and its consequences, and for bringing men (by

60 HUMAN ACTIVITIES OF PRESENT DAY nature the enemies of God) into reconciliation with Himself.

Seeing that this was the purpose for which the Son of God came into the world, and assumed "the likeness of sinful flesh" (Rom. viii. 3), it is a very significant fact that the active religious movements of the day are all in full agreement among themselves in denying the atonement made by Christ on the cross, and in practically ignoring the presence of sin and death in the world.

It is also important to note that the expression "mystery of iniquity" in 2 Thess. ii. 7 is literally "the mystery of lawlessness" (being the identical word used in 1 John iii. 4), and that the designation of the coming leader in verse 8 is "the Lawless One." Therefore the teaching of this passage is that the mystery, which was then already working, and which should eventuate in the advent of the magnate of the end-time, whose coming is to be according to the working of Satan, was the MYSTERY OF LAWLESSNESS. This vast, age-long development is still, and will be to the end, a "mystery" to all who have "not received the love of the truth that they might be saved."

The great Consolidation will therefore be the culmination of man's career of sin or lawlessness; and its leader will be the consummate product of that career, the Man of Sin, or lawlessness.

Here, then, is another great difference between God's plan of deliverance and man's. The former recognizes

DEFICIENCY OF HUMAN REMEDIES the presence of sin, provides a remedy for it, and begins the great work of deliverance by striking directly and effectively at the cause of all human ills. This was the mission to earth of the Son of God. He is the Lamb of God that beareth away the sin of the world.

On the other hand, man's plan of deliverance from evil by the development and systematizing of manufacture and commerce, includes no remedy for sin and death. This conspicuous deficiency in the great religious and social movements of the day should suffice to condemn them in the eyes of all who are not spiritually blinded. For, after all, the utmost that these reformers, evolutionists, and new theologians offer is, the vague promise that the world may, in some far-off day, become a comfortable and agreeable place for the man of the future to sin and die in. There is nothing in all their schemes to meet the need of the man of the present, or to heal the sin-wounds of humanity, and to get rid of sin and death, at any time, present or future.

SECTION II

HAVING taken a general survey of the fields of human activity, and having noted the general characteristics of the movements progressing therein, we will now turn our attention to the more important of the religious movements of the day.

Among the notable products of the activity of recent years is a crop of "new theologies" and other religious novelties. The presence of these new movements, and the rapidity with which they are spreading, testify unmistakably to the fact that the old religious beliefs and systems are unsuited to the temper and thought of the present generation of men. Beyond all question there is something wrong either with the ancient faith or with the modern man. Where the latter is the judge and the final authority in such matters, he decides without qualification that the trouble is with the ancient faith; and he will listen to, and support, only such teachers as make it their study to confirm him in this judgment.