God.

CHAPTER VI.
SIN.

IF the Almighty had never imposed upon His creatures a Law, there would
be no sin; we would be free to do as we please. But the presence of
God's Law restrains our liberty, and it is by using, or rather abusing,
our freedom, that we come to violate the Law. It is for this reason
that Law is said to be opposed to Liberty. Liberty is a word of many
meanings. Men swear by it and men juggle with it. It is the slogan in
both camps of the world's warfare. It is in itself man's noblest
inheritance, and yet there is no name under the sun in which more
crimes are committed.

By liberty as opposed to God's law we do not understand the power to do
evil as well as good. That liberty is the glory of man, but the
exercise of it, in the alternative of evil, is damnable, and debases
the creature in the same proportions as the free choice of good
ennobles him. That liberty the law leaves untouched. We never lose it;
or rather, we may lose it partially when under physical restraint, but
totally, only when deprived of our senses. The law respects it. It
respects it in the highest degree when in an individual it curtails or
destroys it for the protection of society.

Liberty may also be the equal right to do good and evil. There are
those who arrogate to themselves such liberty. No man ever possessed
it, the law annihilated it forever. And although we have used the word
in this sense, the fact is that no man has the right to do evil or ever
will have, so long as God is God. These people talk much and loudly
about freedom--the magic word!--assert with much pomp and verbosity the
rights of man, proclaim his independence, and are given to much like
inane vaunting and braggadocio.

We may be free in many things, but where God is concerned and He
commands, we are free only to obey. His will is supreme, and when it is
asserted, we purely and simply have no choice to do as we list. This
privilege is called license, not liberty. We have certain rights as
men, but we have duties, too, as creatures, and it ill-becomes us to
prate about our rights, or the duties of others towards us, while we
ignore the obligations we are under towards others and our first duty
which is to God. Our boasted independence consists precisely in this:
that we owe to Him not only the origin of our nature, but even the very
breath we draw, and which preserves our being, for "in Him we live,
move and have our being."

The first prerogati