s come into the world, and men love
darkness.' That is the root of evil. 'When the Comforter is come,' said
Paul's Master, 'He will convince the world of sin.' Because they have
broken the commandments? Because they have been lustful, ambitious,
passionate, murderous, profligate, and so on? No! 'Because they believe
not in Me.'

The common root of all sin is alienation of heart and will from God. And
it is by the root, and not by the black clusters of poisonous berries
that have come from it, that men are to be judged. Here is the
mother-tincture. You may colour it in different ways, and you may
flavour it with different essences, and you will get a whole
_pharmacopoeia_ of poisons out of it. But the mother-poison of them
all is this, that men turn away from the light, which is God; and for
you and me is God in Christ.

So this man, looking back from the to-day of his present devotion and
love to the yesterdays of his hostility, avails himself indeed of the
palliation, 'I did it ignorantly, in unbelief,' but yet is smitten with
the consciousness that whilst as touching the righteousness that is of
the law he was blameless, his attitude to that incarnate love was such
as now, he thinks, stamps him as the worst of men.

Brethren, _there_ is the standard by which we have to try ourselves. If
we get down below the mere surface of acts, and think, not of what we
do, but of what we are, we shall then, at any rate, have in our hands
the means by which we can truly estimate ourselves.

But what have we to say about that word 'chief'? Is not that
exaggeration? Well, yes and no. For every man ought to know the weak and
evil places of his own heart better than he does those of any besides.
And if he does so know them, he will understand that the ordinary
classification of sin, according to the apparent blackness of the deed,
is very superficial and misleading. Obviously, the worst of acts need
not be done by the worst of men, and it does not at all follow that the
man who does the awful deed stands out from his fellows in the same bad
pre-eminence in which his deed stands out from theirs.

Take a concrete case. Go into the slums of Manchester, and take some of
the people there, battered almost out of the semblance of humanity, and
all crusted over and leprous with foul-smelling evils that you and I
never come within a thousand miles of thinking it possible that we
should do. Did you ever think that it is quite possible that t