on is abundantly confirmed. Does not
conscience assent? We all admit 'faults,' do we not? We all
acknowledge 'imperfections.' It is that little word 'sin' which seems
to bring in another order of considerations, and to command the
assent of conscience less readily. But sin is nothing except fault
considered in reference to God's law. Bring the notion of God into
the life, and 'faults' and 'slips' and 'weaknesses,' and all the
other names by which we try to smooth down the ugliness of the ugly
thing, start up at once into their tone, magnitude, and importance,
and stand avowed as _sins_.

Well now, if there be, therefore, this universal consciousness of
imperfection, and if that consciousness of imperfection has only need
to be brought into contact with God, as it were, to flame thus, let
me remind you, too, that this fact of universal sinfulness puts us
all in one class, no matter what may be the superficial difference.
Shakespeare and the Australian savage, the biggest brain and the
smallest, the loftiest and the lowest of us, the purest and the
foulest of us, we all come into the same order. It is a question of
classification. 'The Scripture hath concluded all under sin,' that is
to say, has shut all men up as in a prison. You remember in the
French Revolution, all manner of people were huddled indiscriminately
into the same dungeon of the Paris prisons. You would find a princess
and some daughter of shame from the gutters; a boor from the country
and a landlord, a count, a marquis, a _savant_, a philosopher
and an illiterate workman, all together in the dungeons. They kept up
the distinctions of society and of class with a ghastly mockery, even
to the very moment when the tumbrils came for them. And so here are
we all, in some sense inclosed within the solemn cells of this great
prison-house, and whether we be wise or foolish, we are prisoners,
whether we have titles or not, we are prisoners. You may be a
student, but you are a sinner: you may be a rich Manchester merchant,
but you are a sinner; you may be a man of rank, but you are a sinner.
Naaman went to Elisha and was very much offended because Elisha
treated him as a leper who happened to be a nobleman. He wanted to be
treated as a nobleman who happened to be a leper. And that is the way
with a great many of us; we do not like to be driven into one class
with all the crowd of evildoers. But, my friend, 'there is no
difference.' 'All have sinned and come short o