We are living in a world of sin, so enveloped by it and have been so possessed by it, and so accustomed to its innumerable manifestations, that it is impossible for us to form any adequate conception of its utter horribleness and wretchedness while we live in this world. And even when we are cleansed entirely from it, and so filled with divine love that every form and expression of sin gives us a loathsome heart-sickness against it, we still fail to apprehend all its enormity.

We can mark our progress in holiness by our feelings toward sin. At first we turn away from the effects of sin, then we dislike its outward manifestations in crimes and injuries, then we get tired and disgusted with the inward principle of sin, then as our light increases we revolt from the finer shades of sin that come out in what passes for innocent amusement and gayety of human nature; farther on we detect its almost infinite virus, then we discern in finer degrees the universality of its poison and its implacable enmity to God, then we are drawn into an abiding heart sickness toward the very essence of the least sin, until having to live in a sinful world becomes a constant sorrow of spirit. To form some idea of the enormity of sin, let us look at the following items:

1. Get before the mind a picture of all the horrible sins which are being committed every day in the world, the millions of crimes of every known variety which are embraced in the three classes, those which are earthly, and those which are sensual, and those which are devilish; think of the billions of woes, pains, degradations, that these sins are causing, and yet this horrible picture does not give the horribleness of sin. For only think that all these effects flow from the bitter fountain of sin that lies in human souls, and this unseen fountain of iniquity in human hearts and minds is capable of producing all these outward sins and crimes, in a million fold, throughout all eternity. The mere fact is beyond all our imagination.

2. Have we begun to estimate the appalling corruption of human nature in its implicit hatred to God. This hatred to our ever blessed Creator, Preserver, and Redeemer is very seldom explicitly stated in so many words, but it lies implicitly coiled in every natural heart, like a venomous rattlesnake, ready when occasion requires to turn in bitterness against its best friend. See how God is ignored by the mass of men in their writings, their business, their politics, their conversation, their thoughts, and plans, how the very thought of God is pushed as far away as possible. Notice how people in any mixed company seem embarrassed and even irritated at the very mention of God’s name, or his character or his service. The very sight of God’s commandments, or a disclosure of his sovereignty, seems to enrage the most of mankind, and they manifest their secret hatred to God toy improprieties of language or some ugh behavior.

Notice the facility in which human nature, in a sly way, denounces God, blames him with all ill, criticises his providence, seems to take a fiendish delight in misquoting and perverting the plain teachings of his word. If you carefully watch the average man he will in various ways manifest enough hatred to God in one week, that if the same amount of hatred was manifested by any one toward himself he would think it an outrage. Even converted people, not yet perfectly purified, will have spells of peevishness against God, which if thoroughly analyzed is nothing less than implicit hatred to his character, or government, for just as long as the carnal mind remains in the soul it is enmity against God.

3. Look at the subjective ruin that sin produces in our nature. See its effect upon our hearts, corrupting every affection, perverting the desires, begetting a restless hanker for excessive gratification, for unlawful things, making self the center, and wanting to twist everything in life in some manner to the gratifying, the magnifying, the exalting of self. See its work in the mind, clouding the perceptions, blotting out clear distinctions between right and wrong, perverting the reason, stultifying the judgment, intoxicating and polluting the imagination, dragging all the mental faculties from the sweet play in the sunshine of God’s truth to gross and ruinous exercises. What a wreck it has wrought in the will, filling it with rebellion against pure law, impatience of restraint, instability of holy purpose, vacillation and weakness of holy decision. The heart, mind and will is the trinity in the soul, corresponding to the Father, Son and Spirit, and created to live in blessed union with those Divine Persons, but sin turns all these powers into a trinity of hell.

4. Another terrible trait of sin is its facility of blending itself with sickness, and through manifold diseases of the body working against grace. Notice how when the body is diseased the mind becomes depressed, faith is enfeebled, the will loses its courage, the spirituality even of good people seems to pass under a cloud. It is in times of broken-down physical conditions that the devil makes his harvest time of tempting and troubling God’s children, as if sickness was Satan’s pasture for his black angels to feed upon. This proves sin and sickness to be twin brothers.

5. If we investigate the extent of sin we find that it penetrates to every part of man, and to every expression of his being in looks, tones and gestures, to the deepest fountains of his inner spirit, and then spreads itself out like a muddy Mississippi over all the banks of human nature, deluging the animal kingdom, causing the dumb brutes to partake of its conduct, and lifting itself into the very frame work of nature in abnormal storms and floods and drouths, and then soaking itself down into the soil of the earth, preventing the ground from yielding its full harvest, and poisoning the seed germs into briars and thorns.

O, what will it be to enter a bright, beautiful world, where there are no sinners or sin, and where the smell of sin cannot be detected in all its products, or in the sweet movement of its musical seasons and mechanism. In this respect we are like children born and raised in a dark, damp coal mine, and we have no measurements of the unutterable thrill of the blessedness it will be to be lifted into the sun-bright flower gardens of a spotless world, where everything will only be some form of the variegated splendor and sweetness of infinite love.

6. Another trait of sin is its extreme deceitfulness and subtlety. It can steal into the finest crevices of life, and in a thousand ways blend itself with things that are good and harmless of themselves. It insinuates itself into art, and science, and eloquence, and music, and smiles, and social affections, and flowers, and a taste for the beautiful; it sneaks into every avenue of business, and government, and legislation; it seeks to put a poison into every blossom, and a pain into every joy, and self-seeking into every lofty motive. No one, less than God, can search out its infinite refinements and burn out its venom.

7. Sin grows with horrible rapidity. It is like certain poisonous or vile insects that multiply with incredible speed. See how fast sin gets hold of every power of the soul and body. When even spiritual people have imperceptible leakages of grace and begin to backslide, with what lightning velocity evil can grow in them, and how quickly they may become seized upon and controlled by demons. How rapidly sin will develop in young persons, and more swiftly in this age than ever in the world, making multitudes of them old and hardened in sin before they grow a beard. See how in a few years any one passion will absolutely despotise a person, and if people were allowed to live for a century or two, with these inconceivable growths in sin, what monsters in iniquity men would become. Think of one man living in New York, to only an average age, under a boundless passion for money, getting possession, within just a few years, of over two hundred million dollars, one of the greatest sums of wealth ever acquired by any one person since the world was made. If that man had lived two centuries would he not have managed to steal the globe?

The same idea is true of every one of the passions. Hence short life is an infinite mercy with such rapid possibilities of sin. Awful as these facts are, they prove the unlimited capabilities of the soul, for surely God never created us for sin, and it must be abnormal to us, whereas we were fashioned for holiness; and if our nature has such facilities for what is unnatural to us, shall we not have much greater facilities in the spotless and boundless love of God, which is the proper soil and clime of our creation? Even sin itself preaches eloquently to us of the necessity and blessedness of being holy and harmless and undefiled, like our blessed Jesus, and that our only true home is in the bosom of God, and our only true estate is to be flooded with his love.