of God as dynamic, not static; state or place, condition
or relation, it implies work, as God himself implies work. He holds
that truth is not a curiosity for the cabinet but a tool in the
hand; that God's earnest world is no place for nondescript, and that
there is only one region left to which they can drift. What part or
place can there be in the Kingdom of Heaven--in a kingdom won on
Calvary--for people who cannot be relied on, who cannot decide
whether to plough or not to plough, nor, when they have made up
their mind, stick to it? Jesus cannot see. (What a revelation of the
force and power of his own character!)

These, then, are the four classes whom Jesus warns, and it is clear
from the consideration of them that his view of sin is very
different from those current in that day. Men set sin down as an
external thing that drifted on to one like a floating burr--or like
paint, perhaps--it could be picked off or burnt off. It was the
eating of pork or hare--something technical or accidental; or it
was, many thought, the work of a demon from without, who could be
driven out to whence he came. Love and drunkenness illustrated the
thing for them--a change of personality induced by an exterior force
or object, as if the human spirit were a glass or a cup into which
anything might be poured, and from which it could be emptied and the
vessel itself remain unaffected. Jesus has a deeper view of sin, a
stronger psychology, than these, nor does he, like some quick
thinkers of to-day, put sin down to a man's environment, as if
certain surroundings inevitably meant sin. Jesus is quite definite
that sin is nothing accidental--it is involved in a man's own
nature, in his choice, it comes from the heart, and it speaks of a
heart that is wrong. When we survey the four groups, it comes to one
central question at last: Has a man been in earnest with himself
about God's dealings with him? Hardness and lust make a man play the
fool with human souls whom God loves and cares for--a declaration of
war on God himself. Wilful self-deception about God needs no
comment; to shilly-shally and let decision slide, where God is
concerned, is atheism too. In a word, what is a man's fundamental
attitude to God and God's facts? That is Jesus' question. Sin is
tracked home to the innermost and most essential part of the
man--his will. It is no outward thing, it is inward. It is not that
evil befalls us, but that we are evil. In the words of Edward C