Think next, how old a problem this of sin is. The world is weary of it, yet it has to go on wrestling hit. We will take the confess of the famous Greek historian, Thucydides; he lived 400 years before Christ, and says this: "The whole of mankind, whether individuals or communities, is by nature liable to sin. And there is no law that is able to preven' this, since men have had recourse to all kinds of punishments withen" effect, adding to their severity, if by any means they might restrain the outrages of the wicked."
Truly, this serious old fellow was right. All Kinds of awful punishments have been invented, sawing asunder, and so on. Only visit a Chinese temple, and see the Buddhist Hell, then you will have evidence that' punishment: have been well tried, "without effect." Sin cannot be whipped out of man; that is clear. The Guieeks over-came the difficulties of sculpture, of painting, of building, of gram: war, (they invented grammar), yet.'sin was too much for them. This great man uses words almost the same as Paul's "All have sinnet's and be sees no way out at all.
None can deny that sin must be an awful thing, to have resisted every effort of all the wisest men of all nations, all these ages, since Thucydides wrote in sunny Greece, in the flourishing age of Greece. Surely if we treat it as a little thing, there 1s no wonder that the earth is strewn with wrecked lives, And here the world is now stagger. ing from the war, a terrific proof of the power of sin, What fools men are to say sin is just @ figment of theologians with the megrims, how it is able te hold it own, in souls possesssed of every conviction, and every belief, that ought to have driven it out. Take a story from a very interesting bock, Dr. Boyd-Carpenter's "Further "pages from my. life." When Bishop of Ripon had often to pass through Holbeck Junction, near Leeds. A man, who was a clever fellow, bought a ticket every week from Hornsey to Holborn, but before he used it, he altered Holborn (in London), to Holbeck (in Yorkshire) and he was not detected for a long time. That was a sin, to begin with. He was a thief. But, as the Bishop says, the most exttaordinaty thing in it was the reason, why the man travelled every week from London to Leeds. "It was to preach at seme mission, or open-air services to Leeds." There! What do you, who make light of sin make of that? "It is an exceptional case" you say? It is. This man sinned against the light, in a case that the law of the land takes. cog: nizance of.
But who among us has not sinned against the light in things equally offensive to God, in actions, that human lew cannes take cognizance of, but which God can, and does? No doubt the staple of this man's mission sermons were Christ's dying for our sins; yet he did the Railway Company' systematically. But which of us has not sinned against this Christ, who died for us, as for this wretched man? Sin! What a mistake to troat it lightly, when st can make a man do such things! No wonder the world is sore distressed. And it will be till takes the only way able to save it—the Gospel Now, consider another remarkable fact about sin, how it creeps into even new things, such as new forms of philanthropy, new ways of bettering the lot of mankind, and corrupts them, as it has corrupted old ones. It is a subtle insinuating force; it is like the influenza germ; it seems to be in the very air we breathe. Look at State Insurance. What more beautiful than making the old age of toiling peerie easy! And National Sick Benefit! what
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.