"Where sin

And that is most certainly true. abounded, there did grace much more abound." But this is not our subject: we are speaking of the unfolding of the power of sin in the world, which is no less certain than the gracious unfolding of the mystery of godliness, which shall overcome and cast it out at the last. And so, again, it must be said of the alleged advance of the moral and intellectual state of man. It is certain that in Christendom there is neither the blind idolatry nor the gross corruptions of the heathen. Be it so; but there are sins both of the flesh and spirit such as the heathen never knew. The form may be changed; the outward grossness may be purged off. There may be sins having less that is akin to the unreasonable creatures of God, but a nigher fellowship with Satan. The personal guilt may be no less; the opposition of the will to the will of God may be greater. And this is the true life and malignity of sin. Adam's sin had in it little of grossness, but it was intensely guilty-the more so because he was fresh from the hand of his Maker: he was nigh to God, and God held converse with him. Even so it is with Christendom: the sins of Christians, though they are refined and reduced to never so small a measure, are greater and guiltier far than the sins of Tyre and Sidon. It is Capernaum that shall be thrust down to hell. Christendom, as

Adam was, is new from the hand of God. He is in the midst of it; He has filled it with the light His mercy, His truth, His Spirit,

of His presence; are revealed in it. We are nigh God, and He has brought us to an awful fellowship with Himself.. As the mystery of godliness has unfolded in the midst of us, and the light of it has been forced into the conscience of Christendom, so do even the lesser sins of men become far guiltier. They are committed against more light, more grace, greater mercies, louder warnings-in despite of the inward pleadings and drawings of the Spirit of life. It may be, that in Christians a common lie is guiltier than the sin of Achan, and the visions of the imagination than the sin of David; and if so, then it may be a more conscious, naked, wilful act of disobedience in Christians to oppose the law of God in the least, than in the blind unconverted heathen to transgress it in the greatest. And therefore it may be that a multitude of sins, in deed and in thought, which are deemed to be consistent with the context of a refined life, are far more intense provocations of the Divine Majesty, and express far more resolute opposition to the Divine will, than the impure idolatries of the Gentiles, or even the backslidings of the Jews. And, once more, what shall we say of heresy; that is, obstinate resistance to the light of truth ? And, above all, of infidelity ? What must

be the intensity of spiritual evil in such a sin! How pure from all grossness; how keen and disembodied, so to speak, and yet how nearly akin to Satan! And these are sins, I may say, peculiar to Christendom-characteristic, above all, of what is called an enlightened or intellectual age. What were the heresies of the Docetæ, or the Cerinthians, or the Montanists, compared with the scoffing, ribald infidelity which reared itself up in the bosom of the Church a hundred and fifty years ago ? Even where infidelity did not issue (which was seldom enough) in the lowest sensuality, yet what a temper of cold, proud resistance-what an energetic variance of will to the mind of God was there in the heart of an infidel! What a prodigy in God's world is a professing atheist! These are fruits not of the green tree, but of the dry. They were not put forth in the beginning of the new creation; but in the latter days, when, according to prophecy, there have come "scoffers walking after their own lusts:" when we see on every side the words of St. Paul coming to pass: "This know also that in the last days perilous times shall come; for men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady,

high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God." One more fact will be enough. If any man would see the multiplying power and intensity of spiritual evil, let him compare the unity of the Church in the beginning with the schisms of Christendom now. The same sin which entered and destroyed the unity of the old creation, has reentered and broken up again the restored unity of the new. But, to leave both the past and the present, let us remember that the time is not yet come. The full unfolding of sin has ever been at the close of the dispensations of God; it has been at its worst when He was nighest. So, we are taught, it shall be again. All God's Word foretells it; all the face of the world bespeaks the working out of the prophecy. The day of Christ shall not come, until "there come a falling away first, and that wicked be revealed." The mystery of evil, which by one man entered into the world, is now teeming with its mightiest birth. Men have sinned long, and sinned greatly against Heaven; but there is a warfare coming, a strife of man's will against the will of God, in the tumult of which shall all former disobedience be forgotten. The Evil One shall be loosed upon the earth, having great wrath, "because he knoweth he hath but a short time." And all things are making ready for him: the

powers of spiritual wickedness marshalling themselves in secret, unfolding their legions, and unrolling their banners around the camp of the saints. Hell is moving itself to meet his coming. And then shall the sin which by one man entered into the creation of God be at its full, and the world-long growth and gathering of this awful mystery be accomplished. It shall at last stand forth in the earth, at the full stature of its hate and daring against heaven; and by the coming of the Son of Man in glory shall be cast out for ever.