as it lay in Paul's mind, and had been
verified in his experience, was this--that a divine person had left a
life of glory, and in wonderful fashion had taken upon Himself manhood
in order to deliver men from the universal danger and disease. That is
the Gospel which Paul believed, and which he commends to us as 'a
faithful saying.'

Well, then, if that be so, there are two or three things very important
for us to lay to heart. The first is the universality of sin. That is
the thing in which we are all alike, dear friends. That is the one thing
about which any man is safe in his estimate of another. We differ
profoundly. The members of this congregation, gathered accidentally
together, and perhaps never to be all together again, may be at the
antipodes of culture, of condition, of circumstances, of modes of life;
but, just as really below all the diversities there lies the common
possession of the one human heart, so really and universally below all
diversities there lies the black drop in the heart, and 'we all have
sinned and come short of the glory of God.' It is that truth which I
want to lay on your hearts as the first condition to understanding
anything about the power, the meaning, the blessedness of the Gospel
which we say we believe.

And what does Paul mean by this universal indictment? If you take the
vivid autobiographical sketch in the midst of which it is embedded, you
will understand. He goes on to say, 'of whom I am chief.' It was the
same man that said, without supposing that he was contradicting this
utterance at all, 'touching the righteousness which is in the law' I was
'blameless.' And yet, 'I am chief.' So all true men who have ever shown
us their heart, in telling their Christian faith, have repeated Paul's
statement; from Augustine in his wonderful _Confessions_, to John Bunyan
in his _Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners_. And then prosaic men
have said, 'What profligates they must have been, or what exaggerators
they are now!' No. Sewer gas of the worst sort has no smell; and the
most poisonous exhalations are only perceptible by their effects. What
made Paul think himself the chief of sinners was not that he had broken
the commandments, for he might have said, and in effect did say, 'All
these have I kept from my youth up,' but that, through all the
respectability and morality of his early life there ran this streak--an
alienation of heart, in the pride of self-confidence, from God, and an