VII.

THE SIN OF OMISSION.

'To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.'-James iv. 17.

HE unhappiness of life, apart from the discipline

of trial and sorrow which trains to faith and goodness, is the fruit of Sin-of selfishness, disorder, unchastened temper, vicious indulgence, morbid selfesteem. Yet the dwellers in this evil, the workers of this woe, may escape any poignant sense of the guilt they contract or of the misery they create. Nothing is more difficult than to bring a man face to face with his own character, with his own actions and their consequences. We live in strange ignorance of what we are, of the mixed motives that deform us, the self-regard that vitiates our purest ambition, the streaks of imperfection that cloud with baser matter the transparency of our love and dull its power; of the impressions of ourselves we leave on other hearts, the shadows we cast, the joys we restrain, the virtues we injure, the passions we inflame, the burdens or the weariness, the

soreness or irritations we occasion. We are sinning; producing the fruits, casting the shade or blight of sin ; our path is often as the trail of the serpent, whilst no self-knowledge holds the mirror up to Nature, and shows us the image of ourselves.

Is this an overcharged statement?

Put it, then to a very simple test. How small a part of a man's life, of the full use and enjoyment of his being, consists in the abundance of the things that he possesseth

of those things, at least, which the world can give or take away; for the great, universal gifts of God-the dower of nature and of grace-are not to be confounded with conditional or perishable property! How little would suffice for the blessedness of home-life, if hearts and minds were kindled by high interests proper to themselves; the recurring days devoted to pursuits that could never be deprived of healthy opportunity or of the sense of God's favouring blessing; and the sources of all the wounds inflicted by the uneasiness of moral discontent closed up by fellowship in the selfforgeting cheerfulness of earnest occupation! What precious blessings of Almighty God within the dwellings of this land are daily lost, or turned to poison, through the want of adequate pursuits to elevate and tone the character, or, short of this, from the want of a loving spirit of direction and self-government in the ordered conduct of a just life! Almost everywhere may we see collected the materials of blessedness, wanting only the

pure and constant flow of spiritual purpose and endeavour to maintain the regulated glow of growing life. If we could distinctly see what the causes are which disappoint the hopes with which God ever warms the heart of inexperience, we might stand aghast at the sacrifice of His richest opportunities from the absence of the most elementary principles of Christ's spirit and estimate of life. Self-engrossment blinds the fine

faculty of moral observation; we see see not what is passing around us; other hearts, wills, and wants might be extinguished, so rudely are they dealt with, so heedlessly do we pursue our own way, little knowing what mischief we are working, from what love and joy we are banishing ourselves, what fine tissues that better than an armour of proof would have covered and protected us against the calamities of fortune we are painfully rending, the danger we incur of being felt as a foreign substance in unbearable contact with the acutest sensibilities of another's life. What lies at the root of the resulting wounds and estrangements, the abounding resentments and bitterness? Self-will, a want of that rudiment of Christ's spirit which would compel a man to lift his eyes off himself, and live too much within the hearts and lives of others to petrify their sympathies or trample on their rights. When the band of tender respect falls away, and individual inclination rules, out of that hardness and wilfulness come the intensest disappointments, and, as the corruption of

what is best is ever the worst, family life that is not mutual life, that has its forms but not its spirit, its bonds and powers and familiar privileges but not its love, becomes the most effectual of all means for wounding and withering the heart. There is a Greek proverb: 'What can a man drink, if water chokes him?' What can purify and soften a man's nature, if the life of his home affections makes him inconsiderate, selfish and wilful, overbearing and hard? And often, where there is no habitual insensibility, an unguarded weakness, an ungoverned impulse, a moment's passion, can violate the peace of others or stain them with dishonour. Anger will give a voice to carnal instinct; appetite seize the offered draught of guilty pleasure; sloth and self-indulgence relax the law and order of moral well-being; yet, when the natural disasters follow,- broken confidence, with all the agonized and disturbed relations of hearts in which the tie of esteem and trust is loosed-they will be distributed among numberless circumstances, and the fact evaded that they are directly chargeable on per

sonal sin.

How is it, that we can sow the seeds of manifold failure and loss of peace, and yet when the retributions come, not recognize that we are reaping our own harvest? We disorder our tempers, and go forth amidst earth and sky, and our spiritual nature is so jarred that the works of God are no longer a medium of

communication between us and Him, and yet we can escape the knowledge that it is our Sin that has deranged us. We forfeit the security of the sweet intercourses of life, and complain of the inconstancy of friendships we have selfishly abused. We fall behind in work and duty, and go into society with heavy arrears upon our hearts, and find it stale, flat, and unprofitable, without discerning that the deadness is the oppression of an unelastic spirit, our weariness the shadow of a sinful burden. The causes which betray a man into Sin, enable him to avoid the distinct imputation of its own consequences to himself in the selfregard, the occupation with our own wills and ways, which becomes insensible to the claims of men and the offered opportunities of God. All Sin is of the nature of an intense selfishness, a wayward indulgence of personal inclination; and the more selfish a man is, the less does he know that he is so. It banishes God from remembrance, shuts out His fellowship, dares to do without His present love, and cancels His former mercies. God within the soul, and God the Lawgiver, the soliciting Father, the righteous Avenger, with all His spiritual and eternal relations to our being, is for the time extinguished. It ignores, rather than knowingly violates, the claims and rights of others; hears not, sees not, the anguished pleadings, the imploring looks of those whose bosoms it will pierce like a sword; the self-concentration of indulgence becomes our normal