[Footnote 1:  John ix. 41.]

[Footnote 2:  Even if we should widen the meaning of the word “honest,” in the above-mentioned dictum of Pope, and make it include the Latin “honestum,” the same objection would lie against dictum.  Honor and high-mindedness towards man is not love and reverence towards God.  The spirit of chivalry is not the spirit of Christianity.]

THE SINFULNESS OF ORIGINAL SIN.

MATTHEW xix. 20.—­“The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up:  what lack I yet?”

In the preceding discourse from these words, we discussed that form and aspect of sin which consists in “coming short” of the Divine Law; or, as the Westminster Creed states it, in a “want of conformity” unto it.  The deep and fundamental sin of the young ruler, we found, lay in what he lacked.  When our Lord tested him, he proved to be utterly destitute of love to God.  His soul was a complete vacuum, in reference to that great holy affection which fills the hearts of all the good beings before the throne of God, and without which no creature can stand, or will wish to stand, in the Divine presence.  The young ruler, though outwardly moral and amiable, when searched in the inward parts was found wanting in the sum and substance of religion.  He did not love God; and he did love himself and his possessions.

What man has omitted to do, what man is destitute of,—­this is a species of sin which he does not sufficiently consider, and which is weighing him down to perdition.  The unregenerate person when pressed to repent of his sins, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, often beats back the kind effort, by a question like that which Pilate put to the infuriated Jews:  “Why, what evil have I done?” It is the subject of his actual and overt transgressions that comes first into his thoughts, and, like the young ruler, he tells his spiritual friend and adviser that he has kept all the commandments from his youth up.  The conviction of sin would be more common if the natural man would consider his failures; if he would look into his heart and perceive what he is destitute of, and into his conduct and see what he has left undone.

In pursuing this subject, we propose to show, still further, the guiltiness of every man, from the fact that he lacks the original righteousness that once belonged to him.  We shall endeavor to prove that every child of Adam is under condemnation, or, in the words of Christ, that “the wrath of God abides upon him” (John iii. 36), because he is not possessed of that pure and perfect character which, his Maker gave him in the beginning.  Man is culpable for not continuing to stand upon the high and sinless position, in which he was originally placed.  When the young ruler’s question is put to the natural man, and the inquiry is made as to his defects and deficiency, it is invariably discovered that he lacks the image of God in which he was created.  And for a rational being to be destitute of the image of God is sin, guilt, and condemnation, because every rational being has once received this image.