of men as "lost," and
said that He had come to seek and save them. He summoned men, without
distinction, to repentance. He spoke of His blood as "shed for many unto
remission of sins." The gospel which, in His name, was to be preached
unto all the nations was concerning "repentance and remission of sins."
Even His own disciples He taught, as they prayed, to say, "Forgive us
our sins." And though it is true He said once that He had not come to
call the righteous but sinners to repentance, He did not thereby mean to
suggest that there really are some righteous persons who have no need of
repentance; rather was He seeking by the keenness of His Divine irony to
pierce the hard self-satisfaction of men whose need was greater just
because it was unfelt.

"All have sinned;" but once more let us remind ourselves, sin is not
seriously realized except as a personal fact. The truth must come home
as a truth about ourselves. The accusing finger singles men out and
fastens the charge on each several conscience: "Thou art the man!" And
as the accusation is individual, so, likewise, must the acknowledgement
be. It is not enough that in church we cry in company, "Lord have mercy
upon us, miserable offenders"; each must learn to pray for himself, "God
be merciful to me a sinner." Then comes the word of pardon, personal and
individual as the condemnation, "The Lord also hath put away thy sin."

II

In what has been said thus far I have dwelt, for the most part, on the
sterner and darker aspects of Christ's teaching about sin. And, as every
student of contemporary literature knows, there are voices all around us
to-day ready to take up and emphasize every word of His concerning the
mischief wrought by moral evil. Take, _e.g._, a passage like this from
Thomas Hardy's powerful but sombre story, _Tess_:--

"Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"

"Yes."

"All like ours?"

"I don't know; but I think so. They sometimes seem to me like
the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and
sound--a few blighted."

"Which do we live on--a splendid one, or a blighted one?"

"A blighted one."

Or, turn to the works of George Eliot. No prophet of righteousness ever
bound sin and its consequences more firmly together, or proclaimed with
more solemn emphasis the certainty of the evil-doer's doom. "Our deeds
are like children that are born to us," she says; "nay, children may be
strangled