Notes of a sermon preached by the Rev. C E. Darwent in Union Church, Tientsin, Sunday evening January 5. Text? Romans III. 93. "For sil have sinned, and come short of the glory of Ged; being justified ireely by his' grace, through the redemption, that is in Christ Jesus."
We seer, to have here the two things that matter; the two things it behoves vs all to know something about. One is a fact, namely, sinj the other is a fact too, but not as freely admitted a fact as the other, namely, tie power claimed by the Gospel t> cast out this ancient emma of yus race. It is said, that our age is giving up Christ-unity; as to that, people have always been saying that. But, if there is any truth in that statement, the reason for it is not far to seek: people are less troubled about the might of ein than they used to be. Now it is a well-known and universally admitted principle that it.is unwise to underrate the power of a hostile force, of enemy, If a natron thinks slightly of an enemy, or danger, it will not be very thankful for en offer of deliverance from the enemy, or danger. 11 calls those who warn it "alarms"; but we saw the folly of shutting the eyes to danger in the war just ended; we are in danger of committing the same folly ogum, if all accounts are true; and so it may well be that the world is thinking that Christianity is a thing of small im portance, for just the same reason; it is underrating the power of sin, Usperratine Six:
It is astonishing, with the history of the last six years before us, that anyone should think sin a Aittle thing, that can be easily got rid of; yet there it It looks as if people did underrate it, and its power.
We shall, therefore, first take Paul's statement, 'AL! have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God." The whole race. has missed it; it has got into the hands of & power that has made it miss the mark. God set it a mark, or an ideal, to use modern language, and man has fallen short of it. We need to understand Paul's phr: se "come short." At time things "come short." through no fault of their own. There was last year's cotton crop in America. It "came short," it was not an average crop, probably because there was too much rain. Out the cotton was not to blame. It couid'nt help it. Circumstances were too strong for it. But Paul does not mean that we have "(come short of the glory of God" in that sense. He uses it in the sense of the Psalms; David says, "I have sinned, and done this evil in thy sight." So he had. He did it. He got a man yut out of the way, so that he tight have his wife. There was rething like the rain spoiling the cotton in that. No, he did it. And
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.