ion as a great dungeon
is now represented as a heavy weight, pressing down upon those beneath;
if, indeed, we are not, perhaps, rather to think of the low roof of the
dark dungeon as weighing on the captives.

Further, he says that Scripture has driven men into this captivity.
That, of course, cannot mean that revelation makes us sinners, but it
does mean that it makes us more guilty, and that it declares the fact of
human sinfulness as no other voice has ever done. And then the grimness
of the picture is all relieved and explained, and the office ascribed to
God's revelation harmonised with God's love, by the strong, steady beam
of light that falls from the last words, which tell us that the
prisoners have not been bound in chains for despair or death, but in
order that, gathered together in a common doleful destiny, they may
become recipients of a common blessed salvation, and emerge into liberty
and light through faith in Jesus Christ.

So here are three things--the prison-house, its guardian, and its
breaker. 'The Scripture hath shut up all under sin, in order that the
promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given unto all them that
believe.'

I. First, then, note the universal prison-house.

Now the Apostle says two things--and we may put away the figure and look
at the facts that underlie it. The one is that all sin is imprisonment,
the other is that all men are in that dungeon, unless they have come out
of it through faith in Jesus Christ.

All sin is imprisonment. That is the direct contrary of the notion that
many people have. They say to themselves, 'Why should I be fettered and
confined by these antiquated restrictions of a conventional morality?
Why should I not break the bonds, and do as I like?' And they laugh at
Christian people who recognise the limitations under which God's law has
put them; and tell us that we are 'cold-blooded folks who live by rule,'
and contrast their own broad 'emancipation from narrow prejudice.' But
the reality is the other way. The man who does wrong is a slave in the
measure in which he does it. If you want to find out--and mark this, you
young people, who may be deceived by the false contrasts between the
restraints of duty and the freedom of living a dissolute life--if you
want to find out how utterly 'he that committeth sin is the slave of
sin,' try to break it off, and you will find it out fast enough. We all
know, alas! the impotence of the will when it comes to han