Christian devotion to
the historic Jesus.

The sense of sin has received a peculiar impress in the West. We owe it
largely to the religious experience of the Jew and to the seriousness of
the Latin mind. There is a curious coincidence of the seventh chapter of
Romans with a famous quotation from Ovid. The Latin fathers,
particularly Augustine, have developed, not to say over-developed, the
analysis of sin. The concept of sin never had the same significance for
the Greek, and humanism has always resented the severity of the
tradition that comes from Paul through Augustine and Calvin. Mr.
Holmes's stimulating books on education are inspired by a theological
polemic against the doctrine of original sin. He not unnaturally takes
refuge in Buddhism, for Buddhism makes suffering, not sin, the root
trouble of human life. 'The division between the will and the power, the
struggle of the senses against our better judgement, the falling below
the moral ideal--none of all this comes within the horizon of Buddha.'
Now it may freely be confessed that the Calvinist view of sin led to a
distrust of human nature, and incidentally of child-nature, which had a
not altogether healthy reaction on home discipline and school-life. It
is very difficult to maintain the right balance, and the danger of
morbidity through emphasis on sin is undeniable. Yet it seems to me that
the worst errors of Calvinism and Evangelicalism in this regard have
lain in a tendency to theological formalism and a failure to keep in
touch with real life. In consequence, those who most deplore our waning
sense of sin try us by a perverted or antiquated standard, and fasten
often on changes of sentiment and habit which are by no means
necessarily or largely sinful. They are least conscious of the want of a
sense of sin, in modern society, where that want is most serious. But I
do not doubt that our often old-fashioned friends are right on the main
issue. I do not believe that we shall see the progress we desire, unless
we recover a heightened sense of sin. I hold with Lord Acton that our
internal conflicts are due to indifference to sin and not to a religious
idea. We judge ourselves and our race too lightly. We quench our hope of
progress by a leniency and indulgence towards our failings which involve
an underestimate of our powers and responsibilities. The present crisis
will not issue in a hopeful reaction through regret but only through
repentance.

The sense of