ue that if one rejects Jesus Christ, punishment for
him is absolutely certain. The other day in the city of Chicago the
following appeared in the _Inter-Ocean_ as an editorial under the title
of "Preaching for Men."

"To those who look upon men as they are it is simply astounding that so
many preachers should act as if the hope of reward alone could be
efficient to move average mankind to leave sin and follow after
righteousness. In every other relation of human life every man is
constantly confronted with the alternative: Do right and be rewarded;
do wrong and be punished. The pressure of fear as well as the pressure
of hope is continually upon him. He knows that he may conceal his
wrongdoing from the eye of man, but he is always under the fear of
discovery and punishment. But he goes to church, and in nine cases out
of ten the preacher, while insisting that he can hide nothing from the
eye of God, yet says nothing to arouse in him that fear of God which is
the beginning of wisdom. If he turn from religion to science he finds
science more positive of the certainty of punishment than of the
certainty of reward. Science cannot, for example, assure him of a long
life, even though he scrupulously obey hygienic laws. But it can
assure him of a speedy death if he wantonly violates those laws.
Precisely this fact that the consequences of sin in punishment can be
foretold more positively than the consequences of righteousness in
reward is what makes fear the strongest influence dominating and
directing human conduct. Yet many preachers deliberately abandon the
appeal to fear and then wonder why their preaching does not move men to
active righteousness. When more preachers recover from the delusion
into which so many of them have fallen such complaints will diminish.
For all human experience proves that the preaching that appeals to fear
of punishment as well as to hope of reward is the preaching that is
really effective--is the preaching of all the great preachers of the
past and the present--is the preaching that moves."

The statement of the text is exceedingly plain and the teaching is
unquestioned. It is a good thing for us to-day to understand what sin
is, for if we have a wrong conception of sin it naturally follows that
we shall have a wrong conception of the atonement. Without an
understanding of sin there is no sense of guilt, and without the sense
of guilt there is no cry for pardon. The best definition