y Saviour! Then I'll take
More heed to this wand'ring soul of mine, if it's only for Thy sake."

Yes, we are all of worth to God, but we must needs go to the Cross to
learn how great is our worth; and, as we bow in its sacred shadow, may
we learn to say: "For Thy sake, O Christ, for Thy sake, I'll take more
heed to this wandering soul of mine."[34]

* * * * *

CONCERNING SIN

"O man, strange composite of heaven and earth!
Majesty dwarfed to baseness! fragrant flower
Running to poisonous seed! and seeming worth
Choking corruption! weakness mastering power!
Who never art so near to crime and shame,
As when thou hast achieved some deed of name."
NEWMAN.

* * * * *

VIII

CONCERNING SIN

"_When ye pray, say.... Forgive us our sins._"--LUKE xi. 2, 4.

A recent writer has pointed out that sin, like death, is not seriously
realized except as a personal fact. We really know it only when we know
it about ourselves. The word "sin" has no serious meaning to a man,
except when it means that he himself is a sinful man. And hence it comes
to pass that we can still turn to the penitential Psalms, to the seventh
chapter of Romans, to the _Confessions_ of St. Augustine, or to the
_Grace Abounding_ of John Bunyan, and make their words the language of
our own broken and contrite hearts. For when Bunyan and Augustine and
Paul and the psalmists spoke of sin, they spoke not the thoughts of
others, but their knowledge of themselves; they looked into their own
hearts and wrote. That is why their words "find" us to-day.
Nevertheless, paradox though it may seem, our greatest Teacher
concerning sin, Himself "knew no sin." Born without sin, living and
dying without sin, Christ yet "knew what was in man," knew the sin that
was in man, and from His own sinless height once for all revealed and
judged and condemned it. Let us seek, then, to learn the mind of Christ
on this great matter.

And once more, as I have had occasion to point out in a previous
chapter, we must not look for anything formal, defined, systematic in
Christ's teaching. We cannot open the Gospels, as we might some modern
theological treatise, and read out from them a scientific exposition of
sin--its origin, its nature, its treatment. The New Testament is not
like a museum, where the flowers are dried and pressed, and the fossils
lie c