human
nature. He has said, 'Surely man is most miserable of all the
beasts of the field.' He has said, 'I must get rid of my human
nature--I must give up wife, family, human life of all kinds, I must
go into the deserts and the forests, and there try to forget that I
am a man, and become a mere spirit or angel.' So said the Buddhists
of Asia, the deepest thinkers concerning man and God of all the
heathens, and so have many said since their time. But so does the
Bible not say. It starts by telling us that man is made in God's
likeness, and that therefore his human nature is originally and in
itself not a bad, but a perfectly good thing. All that has to be
done to it is to be cured of its diseases; and the Bible declares
that it can be cured. Howsoever man may have fallen, he may rise.
Howsoever the likeness may be blotted and corrupted, it can be
cleansed and renewed. Howsoever it may be perverted and turned
right round and away from God and goodness to selfishness and evil,
it can be converted, and turned back again to God. Howsoever
utterly far gone man may be from original righteousness, still to
original righteousness he can return, by the grace of baptism and
the renewing of the Holy Spirit. And what in us is the likeness of
God? That is a deep question.

Only one answer will I make to it to-day. Whatever in us is, or is
not, the likeness of God, at least the sense of right and wrong is;
to know right and wrong. So says the Bible itself: 'Behold the man
is become as one of us, to know good and evil.' Not that he got the
likeness of God by his fall--of course not; but that he became aware
of his likeness, and that in a very painful and common way--by
sinning against it; as St. Paul says in one of his deepest
utterances, 'By sin is the knowledge of the law.'

And you may see for yourselves how human nature can have God's
likeness in that respect, and yet be utterly fallen and corrupt.

For a man may--and indeed every man does--know good and yet be
unable to do it, and know evil, and yet be a slave to it, tied and
bound with the chains of his sins till the grace of God release him
from them.

To know good and evil, right and wrong--to have a conscience, a
moral sense--that is the likeness of God of which I wish to preach
to-day. Because it is through THAT knowledge of good and evil, and
through it alone, that we can know God, and Jesus Christ whom he has
sent. It is through our moral sense that