aters and
continuing to breathe in a convulsive, suffocating manner, sending up
bubbles to the surface, that mark the place where they are drawing out
their lingering existence.[4] Something like this, is the wretched life
of a vicious population. As we look in upon the fermenting mass, the only
signs of life that meet our view indicate that the life is feverish,
spasmodic, and suffocating. The bubbles rising to the dark and turbid
surface reveal that it is a life in death.

But this, too, is the result of sin. Take the atoms one by one that
constitute this mass of pollution and misery, and you will find that each
one of them is a self-moving and an unforced will. Not one of these
millions of individuals has been necessitated by Almighty God, or by any
of God's arrangements, to do wrong. Each one of them is a moral agent,
equally with you and me. Each one of them is _self_-willed and
_self_-determined in sin. He does not _like_ to retain religious truth in
his mind, or to obey it in his heart. Go into the lowest haunt of vice and
select out the most imbruted person there; bring to his remembrance that
class of truths with which he is already acquainted by virtue of his
rational nature, and add to them that other class of truths taught in
Revelation, and you will find that he is predetermined against them. He
takes sides, with all the depth and intensity of his being, with that
sinfulness which is common to man, and which it is the aim of both ethics
and the gospel to remove. This vicious and imbruted man _loves_ the sin
which is forbidden, more than he loves the holiness that is commanded. He
_inclines_ to the sin which so easily besets him, precisely as you and I
incline to the bosom-sin which so easily besets us. We grant that the
temptations that assail him are very powerful; but are not some of the
temptations that beset you and me very powerful? We grant that this
wretched slave of vice and pollution cannot break off his sins by
righteousness, without the renewing and assisting grace of God; but
neither can you or I. It is the action of _his own_ will that has made
him a slave. He loves his chains and his bondage, even as you and I
naturally love ours; and this proves that his moral corruption, though
assuming an outwardly more repulsive form than ours, is yet the same
thing in principle. It is the rooted aversion of the human heart, the
utter disinclination of the human will, towards the purity and holiness
of God