The Real Punishment of Sin. A SERMON, PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE'S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE, REV. CHARLES VOYSEY. PSALM LXII. 12.-" Thou Lord art merciful, for thou rewardest every man according to his work." T HE task I have undertaken this morning is to set forth the real punishment of sin; and any one who. has ever bestowed serious thought upon the subject must be aware of the enormous difficulties which beset it on every side; therefore, the utmost I can hope to do is to kindle a little more interest in the great problem, if it be altogether impossible to throw fresh light upon it. My text, as you must all see, presents a marvellously happy contrast to the Revivalists' Gospel we have been lately considering. The words, though so few and simple, speak volumes in favour of the perfect moral character of the Divine dealings. Instead of God's mercy and justice being as it were in a state of conflict and needing to be reconciled by a compromise, God is said to be merciful because he is just. His mercy is seen in His very justice. No token of God's mercy could be given more sure than in this, that He rewardeth every man according to His work. If by mercy we mean kindness, clemency, compassion and generosity, all in one, then exact justice is the truest mercy. It was a bold flight of the Psalmist to utter this aphorism, and thus to echo the voice which came to Moses on Sinai, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, full of compassion. Rev. C. Voysey's sermons are to be obtained at St. George's Hall, every Sunday morning, or from the Author (by post), Camden House, Dulwich, S.E. Price one penny, postage a halfpenny. and mercy, and yet He will by no guilty." means clear the The text needs no explanation, would be weakened by paraphrase, obscured by commentary. I do not wish to say more upon it than I have said by way of contrasting it with the doctrines of endless hell and the atonement by Blood. A much more important consideration for the present is, whether the justice of God is, or is not, as described by the Psalmist ? Does God reward every man according to His work? And in endeavouring to set forth the real punishment of sin we shall perhaps be able to answer these momentous questions. It is obvious that we cannot pursue such an enquiry with any profit unless our terms be carefully defined. We must therefore begin by asking What is sin? What is punishment? Sin has been loosely described as a breaking of the laws of God. Under which laws are generally understood to be included such laws as "Thou shalt not steal;""Thou shalt not kill;""Thou shalt not bear false witness;" and other well known elementary principles of morality between man and man. But under the same category are popularly included such laws as these: "Thou shalt not play games on Sunday; Thou shalt go regularly to Church; Thou shalt not go to the theatre; Thou shalt believe all the articles of the Christian Faith; Thou shalt be baptized and thou shalt partake of the Lord's Supper." From these examples it is at once easy to see that "breaking the laws of God" will not do for a definition of sin; for though stealing and perjury are universally condemned, killing is almost universally allowed and vindicated sometimes indeed called "the noble art of war ; " and in self-defence, or in the protection of one's home and family, killing is universally deemed to be lawful. Moreover in some cases men know it would be no sin at all to play games on Sunday, but rather a praiseworthy action; that it would be in some cases sinful to go to church, or to be baptized, or to receive the Lord's Supper, and not sinful to go to the theatre either as a performer or as a spectator. The question is still further complicated by the fact that in these days a new and wider meaning has been given to the term "laws of God," by which we now understand such laws as that of gravitation, the invariable action of fire and water, of air and light, and in short every regular and constant sequence which has been discovered in natural forces. We have heard it gravely asserted that in some cases of disease the laws of God have been broken or the disease could not have been contracted; that railway or other accidents are the result of breaking the laws of God (and no doubt there is a sense in which this is true; though not the sense in which the expression is generally used.) If a man falls from a balloon through carelessness or ignorant neglect of some natural law, his death is said to be a punishment for his violation of natural laws. If parents allow their little boys to play with loaded fire-arms they are often punished by one or other of their children being shot. If they allow them to suck lucifer matches, they are punished for their criminal carelessness by their children being poisoned, But, if we may speak of these and similar events as punishments for breaking God's laws; what are we to say of the Fire Brigade, e.g., who expose their lives, and sometimes forfeit them, all in order to rescue other people from being burned to death? are we to call their fate a punishment for disregard of natural laws? Are the noble men who have bound a girdle of love and mercy round our treacherous shores to be called sinners for hazarding their precious lives in the Life-boat Service? when capsized and all hands perish in the heroic attempt, are we to call their fate a punishment for infringing the laws of God? Up to this time heroic virtue, it seems to me, consists in setting those laws at defiance and braving the penalties which ruthless Nature seldom fails to inflict. The truth is that sin cannot be rightly defined as "breaking the laws of God," whether those laws be so-called moral or only physical. That is to say, certain specific acts may be sins; but a sin is not a sin only because it is a specific act. In a general way the broad principles of human morality are sound and clear. "To do unto others as we would be done by " is capable of nearly universal application as a test of right conduct; but even here there is a wide margin not occupied at all and in which might be found many matters affecting the welfare of society, and what is still more important, the moral welfare of indi vidual souls. I allude here to such matters as the relation between the sexes, the laws of the land which regulate Sunday observance, and many other things regulated only by convention or public opinion. I look in vain for a definition of sin either in the vague term "breaking the laws of God," or in any categorical list of specific acts. Some acts usually regarded as sinful are not always and in all cases sins; some acts usually regarded as right are on the other hand under certain circumstances sinful. The same act by the same person may be at one time sinful and at another time perfectly right. For instance, I remember the time when I thought it the height of wickedness to enter a theatre, or to touch a card on the Sunday. Now I know it is not sinful for me to do either of these things; the sinfulness therefore does not lie in the act itself, but in the feeling in which the act is regarded by the agent. And this lands me at once in the definition I wish to give you of sin. If a person does what he believes to be wrong and what he thinks in his heart he ought not -to do and can surely help doing if he pleased, that action, whatever it be, is then and there a sin. Sin is what is done against a man's conscience. I am therefore just as certain that I should have been doing wrong in my younger days by going to a theatre, or by playing at whist on Sunday, as I am now certain that these things are perfectly lawful and right. I do not mean to say for one moment that all acts whatever have no moral quality except as they are felt to be right or wrong by each actor's conscience, for there must be an eternal distinction between truthfulness and falsehood, fidelity and treachery, love and hatred, mercy and cruelty. But when I speak of sin and punishment, I am speaking of something more than the mere ideal act and its consequences; I am speaking of the state of mind in which the actor is at the moment when he is violating his own conscience; and this alone is what I call sin. No one ever dreams of imputing sin to the murderer who is a lunatic. We still say the act of murder is wicked and must be so abstractedly considered at all times; but we do not impute wickedness to any one for the most heinous offence, if at the time of its perpetration he was not responsible for his actions. Similarly, we rightly condemn every act of persecution and call it wicked to torture or burn heretics; yet if we have a grain of justice or common sense, we must hold all those persecutors guiltless who persecuted for conscience' sake, thinking that they were thereby doing God service; or in modern language, believing they were doing their duty. Think, my friends, of the many actions of our lives and of the many omissions of duty which we are innocently committing, but which a more morally enlightened posterity may hereafter detect and condemn. As compared with our descendants in the 30th century, the best amongst us may be some day adjudged as vile sinners; but is it our fault? Can we be to blame for a single action committed in ignorance, or for a single duty unfulfilled which has never ever entered our imagination? We are only to blame for doing what we know to be wrong, for leaving undone what we know to be right. This is in my opinion sin; and there can be no sin without conscious violation of each man's own conscience. Now as every act must have consequences, sin is followed by its own. But are these invariable? I think it will be hardly too much to say that every sin inflicts some injury on ourselves or on others or on both. Trace it out, and every act of dishonesty, every lie spoken, every instance of guilty self-indulgence, every unkind and cruel word and deed, will bear its own fruit of wretchedness somewhere. But the immediate consequences of sin are by no means so transparently miserable. "Stolen waters are sweet," is the old proverb which centuries have not been able to overthrow. The first fruits of sin, depend upon it, are generally very delicious indeed, or they would not prove so tempting. Looking at the facts as they are and not as fiction would distort them, it is very pleasant to sin, to do exactly what one likes to do, and what one longs to do to gratify the wish of the hour, whether it be for physical delight or for ambition or for revenge. The immediate pleasure is, in very deed, the strength of the temptation; and but for the craving for self-indulgence, conscience would keep us all as straight and upright as it is possible to be. Honesty, despite the venerable maxim, is not always the best policy, but quite the reverse. Some owe all their earthly misfortune to strict integrity, others owe all their prosperity and seeming happiness to some baseness, some |