coming so by his own
power sets in thick night.

In our careless unawakened state, which is our ordinary state, we sin on
from day to day, just as we live on from day to day, without being
distinctly aware of it. A healthy man does not go about, holding his
fingers upon his wrist, and counting every pulse; and neither does a
sinful man, as he walks these streets and transacts all this business,
think of and sum up the multitude of his transgressions. And yet, that
pulse all the while beats none the less; and yet, that will all the while
transgresses none the less. So long as conscience is asleep, sin is
pleasant. The sinful activity goes on without notice, we are happy in
sin, and we do not feel that it is slavery of the will. Though the chains
are actually about us, yet they do not gall us. In this condition, which
is that of every unawakened sinner, we are not conscious of the "bondage
of corruption." In the phrase of St. Paul, "we are alive without the
law." We have no feeling sense of duty, and of course have no feeling
sense of sin. And it is in this state of things, that arguments are
framed to prove the mightiness of mere conscience, and the power of bare
truth and moral obligation, over the perverse human heart and will.

But the Spirit of God awakens the conscience; that sense of obligation to
be _perfectly_ holy which has hitherto slept now starts up, and begins to
form an estimate of what has been done in reference to it. The man hears
the authoritative and startling law: "Thou shalt be perfect, as God is."
And now, at this very instant and point, begins the consciousness of
enslavement,--of being, in the expressive phrase of Scripture, "_sold_
under sin." Now the commandment "comes," shows us first what we ought to
be and then what we actually are, and we "die."[2] All moral strength
dies out of us. The muscle has been cut by the sword of truth, and the
limb drops helpless by the side. For, we find that the obligation is
immense. It extends to all our outward acts; and having covered the whole
of this great surface, it then strikes inward and reaches to every
thought of the mind, and every emotion of the heart, and every motive of
the will. We discover that we are under obligation at every conceivable
point in our being and in our history, but that we have not met
obligation at a single point. When we see that the law of God is broad
and deep, and that sin is equally broad and deep within us; when we learn