within, the external commandment, however divine, passed out of view; and the study of particular precepts was superseded by the energy of the divine life in the soul. "Thou shalt not steal;" "Thou shalt not commit adultery," are injunctions of permanent and universal obligation; but to the honest and pure man they are futile,-nay more, they never receive their perfect and ideal fulfilment till they have ceased to present themselves as a binding law without, and have become a spontaneous and inevitable expression of inward sanctity. And so throughout the whole range of moral obligation. The Law which correctly defines and imposes it is divine, and confronts us with imperative commands; and yet for him in whom the Spirit of God abides, it melts away, and becomes simply the intellectual expression of his own deepest love and devotion. If real righteousness be thus inward, sin must be so no less. "Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts," with all their dreadful train of vice and crime.1 Sin, accordingly, is an estrangement of the inward life from the life of God.2 It is indeed a state of "lawlessness," 3 1 Mark vii. 21 sqq., with the parallels. 3 1 John iii. 4. SIN INWARD AND OUTWARD. 217 and expresses itself through transgressions of the commandments; but the most perfect mechanical obedience to the moral law would not purge away sin so long as the heart was deformed and foul, and the brute-life sat upon the throne of God in the divine palace of the soul. It is in consequence of this spiritual fact that the later theology has distinguished two kinds of sin, original and actual. We cannot here discuss the forms which this distinction has assumed, or the effect which scientific and historical inquiry must have upon them; the simple facts of Christian consciousness alone concern us. To the moralist and legislator transgression, the saying or doing of something wrong, is sin. This is actual, presenting itself in the world as a thing that we can judge and punish. If, on the other hand, there is no transgression, man must stand aside, and the law cannot interfere. But he whom the word of Christ has reached cannot be satisfied with this external innocence. To him impure thoughts, covetousness, worldliness, envy, hatred, malice, selfishness, anger and resentment, are sin, even if, like wild beasts, they are kept within their cage, and never allowed to give vent to their savage nature. The man may feel that he has not created these things, and that therefore their presence does not involve moral guilt so long as he wages war against them; but still he regards them as evils which belong, not to the physical, but to the moral realm. Opposed as they are to the divine ideal of humanity, they separate him from the beauty of holiness, and deny him the peace of a cleansed and reconciled heart. Hence arises the necessity for conversion, which is primarily a change in the inward principle of life. Jesus began his preaching by taking up the warning cry of the Baptist: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand;" and this word "repent" implies, not only a change of conduct, but a change of mind. He demanded of the Pharisees that they should cleanse the inside of the cup and platter; in other words, that they should cherish inward purity and truth, to which the outward life would spontaneously conform, whereas the most diligent outward cleansing would not remove the inward selfishness and intemperance.1 On another occasion he made the emphatic declaration: "Verily I say unto you, unless ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."2 This was said in immediate reference to 1 Matt. xxiii. 25 sqq.; Luke xi. 39 sqq. 2 Matt. xviii. 3. NEED OF CONVERSION. 219 the ambitious views of the disciples; but it is susceptible of a much wider application. Men whose thoughts were bent upon their own aggrandizement were ipso facto outside the spiritual realm, and could enter it only by a change to the simplicity and selfrenunciation of love; and so, in general, it is only the sweet and heavenly disposition that can make one a subject of that kingdom where God is the sole sovereign of the heart. The deepest saying upon this subject is that which was addressed to Nicodemus : "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, unless a man be born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God."1 Different views are taken, which we cannot pause to discuss, as to the historical character of the narrative where these words occur; but whether they were literally addressed to a "ruler of the Jews," or were spoken in the spirit to the heart of a disciple, they are equally true as an expression of the mind of Christ, and sum up in one profound phrase the purport of a large part of his teaching. If the pure in heart shall see God, it is equally true that the impure cannot see him. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned; and no striving of the senses and the intellect, no enforce1 John iii. 3. ment of duty by the determined will, can ever discover that which is revealed only in visitations of the Spirit. The filial mind, the communion with God, the sense of Divine love and peace flooding our inward being, which are the essence of Christianity, cannot be created by strenuous endeavour any more than our own volition has created our physical frame: they must come as a birth from on high, opening our eyes to a new world of heavenly beauty, and ravishing our ears with the sound of angelic songs, and giving to the conscious soul a rapture which, at its entrance on the visible scene, it could not know. But this, it might seem, does away with human responsibility; for many men appear to be incapable of these higher experiences, and no one can be justly blamed for not obtaining that which God alone can create. It rests with man, however, to be true to the highest which he knows, and not to bar out the Spirit of God by his pride and self-will. a race, we are slowly climbing upward towards the appointed end, and we are variously endowed with spiritual gifts, that we may receive mutual help, and the glowing faith of one may kindle into the warmth of life the dormant soul of another. Nor As |