g the corpse through the banquet; but
we confidently contend that the recognition by Christ of the morbid
phases of human life is altogether wise and gracious.

I. We consider, first, the recognition by revelation of sin. Sackcloth
is the outward and visible sign of sin, guilt, and misery. How men
shut their eyes to this most terrible reality--coolly ignoring,
skilfully veiling, emphatically denying it! "The heart from the moment
of its first beat instinctively longs for the beautiful...." We strive
for the right and the true: it is circumstance that thrusts wrong
upon us. What is popularly called sin these philosophers call error,
accident, inexperience, indecision, misdirection, imperfection,
disharmony; but they will not allow the presence in the human heart of
a malign force which asserts itself against God, and against the
order of His universe. That principle which is darkness in the mind,
perverseness in the will, idolatry in the affections, "every passion's
wild excess, anger, lust, and pride,"--the existence of any such
principle they absolutely and scornfully deny. There is no evil in the
universe, all is good, and where everything is good human nature is
still the best. A single substance comprises all that is, and no place
is left for that profoundly decisive and destructive element called
sin; all that we have to do is to descant on the marvelous loveliness
of the world, the serene harmony of the universe, man's love of the
true, the beautiful, and the good. Intellectual masters like Emerson
and Renan. ignore conscience; they refuse to acknowledge the
selfishness, the baseness, the cruelty of society; they are deaf to
the groans of creation; they smile, and expect us to smile, whilst
they clap a purple patch of rhetoric on the running sores of humanity.
No sackcloth must pass their gate, and no craftsman of Ind ever wove
gossamer half so delicate and delightful as the verbal veil with which
these literary artists attempt to conceal the leprosy of our nature.

And men generally are willing to dupe themselves touching the fact
and power of sin; they are strongly disinclined to look directly and
honestly at that inner confusion of which we are all more or less
conscious. We willingly acknowledge our transgression of the higher
law, that we do the things we ought not to do, and leave undone the
things that we ought to do; we have an unpleasant feeling that all is
not right, nay, indeed, that something is serio