aird,
"the passion that misleads us is a manifestation of the same ego,
the same self-conscious reason which is misled by it," and thus, as
Burns puts it, "it is the very 'light from heaven' that leads us
astray." The man uses his highest God-given faculties, and uses them
against God.

But this is not all. Many people will agree with the estimate of
Jesus, when they understand it, in regard to most of these classes;
perhaps they would urge that in the main it is substantially the
same teaching as John the Baptist's, though it implies, as we shall
see, a more difficult problem in getting rid of sin. Jesus goes
further. He holds up to men standards of conduct which transcend
anything yet put before mankind. "Be ye therefore perfect," he says,
"even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matt. 5:48).
When we recall what Jesus teaches of God, when we begin to try to
give to "God" the content he intended, we realize with amazement
what he is saying. He is holding up to men for their ideal of
conduct the standard of God's holiness, of God's love and
tenderness. Everything that Jesus tells us of God--all that he has
to say of the wonderful and incredible love of God and of God's
activity on behalf of his children--he now incorporates in the ideal
of conduct to which men are called. John's conceptions of
righteousness grow beggarly. Here is a royal magnificence of active
love, of energetic sympathy, tenderness, and self-giving, asked of
us, who find it hard enough to keep the simplest commandments from
our youth up (Mark 10:20). We are to love our enemies, to win them,
to make peace, to be pure--and all on the scale of God. And that
this may not seem mere talk in the air, there is the character and
personality of Jesus, embodying all he asks of us--bringing out new
wonders of God's goodness, the ugliness and evil of sin, and the
positive and redemptive beauty of righteousness.

The problem of sin and forgiveness becomes more difficult, as we
think of the positive ideals which we have not begun to try to
reach. Let us sum up what it involves.

Jesus brings out the utter bankruptcy to which sin reduces men. They
become "full of hypocrisy and lawlessness" (Matt. 23:28), so
depraved that they are like bad trees, unproductive of any but bad
fruit (rotten, in the Greek, Matt. 7:17); the very light in them is
darkness, and how great darkness (Matt. 6:23). They are cut off from
the real world, as we saw, and lose the facu