the Rev. C. E. Darwent in Union Sunday Morning, July 22
15; "Yet without sin."
See now, what a wonder is the idea of a sinless man. This is proved by the fact, that the idea of a sinless man is found only on Christian soil. That is, you do not find the trace of an idea of a sinless man anywhere, except where knowledge of Christianity has penetrated' I do not pretend to know everything, T am always open to correction, but I, at least, know no nation or age, that has had even the ghost of an idea of such a being as a sinless man. It is not that other religions have. credited their great men and gods with sinlessness, when they were not sinless, No. It is that, as far as 1 know, the very idea of a sinless man has never emerged at all' anywhere, except in lands where the knowledge of the Gospel has come It does look as if man has always known, that he is such a bad hat,"-so utterly corrupted by sin, that it has never entered his head even to imagine anyone, of whom it could be said, he was "without sin." If anyone doubts that, let us pass in review the greatest and holiest men of all the religious, and the gods of many of them, to see if we can find ona "without sin" in the belief of the followers of that religion. There were the Jews. We take them first, because they are more important in the history of religion than all the rest put together. They were the most religious race of the old world, and nothing is clearer than that Christianity sprang out of Judaism. Without the grand Jewish history and God's velation to and through His chosen people, where indeed is Christianity? It floats in the air. It has no backing in history, if I may change the metaphor. Now if there is one thing absolutely clear, it is this, that it never entered a Jewish head to imagine any of their saints as men or women "without sin." If anybody, surely Moses, one of the greatest and best men the world has produced, would be credited with this astounding quality. But, as we know, he is not. We are expressly told, that he was prohibited from entering the Promised Land, because he had most grievously sinned; he tells them. in one -place, "Also the Lord was angry with me for your sakes, saying, Thou shalt not go in thither.'" That disposes of Moses. Then og for David, the "Man after God's own heart," we have the stories of his sins, and his repentance, which are well enough known. The truth about the Jews is, that so far from being so great in the history of religion, because of their possession of a sinless man, they are great for precisely the opposite reason, because of their sense of sin. They were the only people who had an adequate sense of sin, and the need of repentance. There is Dawid's agonized cry, "Against thee and thee only have I sinned." There is Isaiah, a saint if ever there was one, a seraph now, I should think, what about him?" Woo me! because T am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips." Yes. The Jew was great because he and his greatest saints admitted themselves to be sinful before God, as says Isaiah; "for mine eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts." I sometimes think that what the Christian Church needs. is a strong dose of Judaism, as a kind of moral purge, to get rid of the sentimental mush and tosh, arising from the abuse of the doctrine of the love of Chr'st, which has destroyed - all sense of sin among us, and makes al! real Christianity almost impossible. I am-not aware that. the Mohammedans make any claim, that their prophet was. "without sin." Their. great doctrine of the oneness of God does riot require it in the least, and I do not think, that they make it.
Then when we turn to the pagan world of antiquity, the case is clear indeed. I do not remember any claim. that any. one of the best of the heathen was sinless; not Plate, not even; Socrates. Indeed, it was the late~ Professor Seeley, a writer by no means prejudiced in favour of orthodoxy, who says in "Lecce Homo," that not more than one or two men in all heathen antiquiry "could be said to be holy at all." And then when we come to the gods, and any. claim for them to be holy, without sin," we have only to turn to any classical dictionary to find, that they are out of court. Jupiter: was a shockingly unfaithful husband. Lempriere says, "his children were as numerous as his mistresses." With such scandalous living gods, the marvel is, that Greeks and Romans were as. good and moral as they were. Go where you like and look where you like, as far as I can see there is not the gleam of the idea of the possibility of one: who could be called sinless, except where the New Testament is known, where Christ hag been. preached, where the Gospel has
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.