What seems very strange yet is wonderfully true is that all sins and crimes against others find their origin in the indulgence of either stomach or sexual organs.
Starvation may lead to crime. Hunger often drives to theft. Extravagance, lust, and luxury lead to any variety of crime, from forgery to appropriating another man’s wife.
In the gratification of those two organs, passions, we find the cradle of all crime.
And what we call morality means the proper regulation of these passions, of these organs.
The church occasionally takes cognizance of sins, when discovered, that do not come within the category of crime, as was seen recently in the case of a Major Theobald who seduced his niece while nursing his invalid wife; he was suspended for one year, but saved his soul!
All our civil justices in the city of New York are kept busy to regulate and to punish overindulgences of the stomach and some other petty wrongs. Our criminal courts are kept busy in punishing those who have wrongfully appropriated other people’s property, or injured or killed another.
The superior civil courts attend to the disputes about property.
Why do those who adopt for their mode of livelihood the profession of theology want to exercise salvation? What have they to save?
Let us examine for what sins the Deluge was brought, Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, and Christ was crucified.
The principal scriptural sins: