ines to evil is
the measure of the amount of power to good which he has thereby lost. And
if the intensity be total, then the loss is entire. Total depravity
carries with it total impotence and helplessness. The more carefully we
observe the workings of our own wills, the surer will be our conviction
that they can ruin themselves. We shall indeed find that they cannot be
_forced_, or ruined from the outside. But, if we watch the influence upon
the _will itself_, of its own wrong decisions, its own yielding to
temptations, we shall discover that the voluntary faculty may be ruined
from within; may be made impotent to good by its own action; may
surrender itself with such an intensity and entireness to appetite,
passion, and self-love, that it becomes unable to reverse itself, and
overcome its own wrong disposition and direction. And yet there is no
_compulsion_, from first to last, in the process. The man follows
himself. He pursues his own inclination. He has his own way and does
as he pleases. He loves what he inclines to love, and hates what he
inclines to hate. Neither God, nor the world, nor Satan himself, force
him to do wrong. Sin is the most spontaneous of self-motion. But
self-motion has _consequences_ as much as any other motion. Because
transgression is a _self_-determined act, it does not follow that it has
no reaction and results, but leaves the will precisely as it found it. It
is strictly true that man was not necessitated to apostatize; but it is
equally true that if by his own self-decision he should apostatize, he
could not then and afterwards be as he was before. He would lose a
_knowledge_ of God and divine things which he could never regain of
himself. And he would lose a spiritual _power_ which he could never again
recover of himself. The bondage of which Christ speaks, when He says,
"Whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin," is an effect within the
soul itself of an unforced act of self-will, and therefore is as truly
guilt as any other result or product of self-will,--as spiritual
blindness, or spiritual hardness, or any other of the qualities of sin.
Whatever springs from will, we are responsible for. The drunkard's
bondage and powerlessness issues from his own inclination and
self-indulgence, and therefore the bondage and impotence is no excuse for
his vice. Man's inability to love God supremely results from his intense
self-will and self-love; and therefore his impotence is a part and
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