itting
of denial. And I think we are still on secure ground when we say that at
the root of a very large proportion of these failures is some one of the
myriad forms of sin and selfishness. The strange thing, the bewildering
and baffling, although, as I believe, not wholly inexplicable thing, is
that men in a very large number of cases suffer on account of sins for
which they are in no sense responsible. But the fact remains of the
close connexion which experience shows to exist between human sin and
human suffering. It is impossible to prove wide assertions, but a strong
case could undoubtedly be made out for the statement that sin is a more
prolific source of misery and failure in human life than all other
factors put together.

2. Next, we turn to the witness of conscience, of our moral reason. The
main point here is that so often brought forward, of the uniqueness of
remorse. I may make a foolish blunder. I may do some hasty and
ill-considered act, and in consequence suffer some measure of
inconvenience, or perhaps experience a veritable disaster and overthrow
of my hopes. But in either case, though I may feel poignant regret, I am
as far as possible from the experience of remorse, save in so far as my
blunder may have involved neglect of some duty, or a carelessness morally
culpable. But when I have committed a sin, then it would be a most
inadequate description of my state of mind to call it regret. I suffer
from that intense mental pain which we have learnt to call remorse, the
constant and relentless avenger which waits upon every transgression of
the moral law. And when, leaving my own experience, I interrogate the
experience of men better than myself, above all, that of the saints of
God, I meet with the same phenomenon a thousandfold intensified. And I
have a right in such a matter to accept the witness of the experts. A
saint is an expert in spiritual things, and his evidence in spiritual
matters is as cogent and trustworthy as that of the biologist or
geologist in his special field of experience.

So far, then, as the witness of the moral consciousness goes, both in
myself and in those who have in an especial degree cultivated their moral
faculties, it bears out the contention that sin is the only thing which
can be described as absolutely, without qualification, evil.

3. The same result follows from the consideration of the origin and
nature of sin.

Here we have two sources of informat