extent of spiritual power such ministers may
claim. The essence of religious liberty is that men should feel that
there is nothing whatever that stands between themselves and God; that
they can approach God with perfect and simple access; that they can
speak to Him without concealment of their sins, and receive from Him
the comforting sense of the possibility of forgiveness. Of course the
sense of sin is a terribly complicated one, because it seems to be made
up partly of an inner sense of transgression, a sense of failure, a
consciousness that we have acted unworthily, meanly, miserably. Yet the
sense of sin follows many acts that are not in themselves necessarily
disastrous either to oneself or the community. Then there is a further
sense of sin, perhaps developed by long inheritance of instinct, which
seems to attend acts not in themselves sinful, but which menace the
security of society. For instance, there is nothing sinful in a man's
desiring to save himself, and in fact saving himself, from a sudden
danger. If a man leaps out of the way of a runaway cart, or throws
himself on the ground to avoid the accidental discharge of a gun, he
would never be blamed, nor would he blame himself, for any want of
courage. Yet if a man in a battle saves himself from death by flight,
he would regard himself, and be regarded by others, as having failed in
his duty, and he would be apt to feel a lifelong shame and remorse for
having yielded to the impulse. Again, the deliberate killing of another
human being in a fit of anger, however just, would be regarded by the
offender as a deeply sinful act, and he would not quarrel with the
justice of the sentence of death which would be meted out to him; but
when we transfer the same act to the region of war, which is
consecrated by the usage of society, a man who had slain a hundred
enemies would regard the fact with a certain complacency, and would not
be even encouraged by a minister of religion to repent of his hundred
heinous crimes upon his deathbed.

The sense, then, of sin is in a certain degree an artificial sense, and
would seem to consist partly of a deep and divine instinct which
arraigns the soul for acts, which may be in themselves trifling, but
which seem to possess the sinful quality; and partly of a conventional
instinct which considers certain things to be abominable, which are not
necessarily in themselves sinful, because it is the custom of the world
to consider them so.