Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors

by James Freeman Clarke

§ 4. Reaction of Sin on the Soul.

Now, the consequences of sin are these: First, every act of sin brings after it natural evil consequences. It weakens the strength of the soul, it darkens the spiritual eye, it hardens the heart, it adds a new link to the chain of evil habit. By a result as inevitable as the law of gravitation, every act of sin pollutes, [pg 219] darkens, weakens the spiritual principle in man. “He who sows to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.” We may call these results the external consequences of sin, because they change our spiritual relation and position in God's external universe. But there is another more awful and as inevitable consequence of sin. It alienates us from God himself. It turns our face from the Source of life and love. It makes us at war with him. It fills us with the sense of his displeasure, and burdens us with the consciousness of guilt. To escape the dreadful sense of his anger, we hide ourselves from him, as Adam did. It is a law of the human mind that we dread the sight of any one whom we have wronged, because it condemns us. Perhaps he may be perfectly willing to forgive us; perhaps he does not even know that we have wronged him; but we cannot bear to see him, notwithstanding. It was a profound feeling of this law which led an ancient historian to say, “He hated him because he had injured him.” Thus an active conscience, if it does not make a man better, will make him worse: to escape its torture he will plunge into new crimes. Some of the darkest crimes which stain the page of history may be traced to this source,—to the operation of a conscience strong enough to produce the sense of guilt, but not strong enough to produce the determination to reform. It is related that when the mother of Charles IX. of France and his uncles were urging the young king to consent to the execution of some of the principal Protestants to whom he was strongly attached, after a long resistance, when he at last gave way, it was with these remarkable words: “I consent, then, but only on one condition,—that you do not leave a Huguenot in France to reproach me with it.”[18] And hence the Bartholomew Massacre, which its authors had intended before only to include a few individuals. So sin takes occasion by the law, and the commandment ordained for life becomes death.

The same principle operates with respect to God. We have broken his law. We feel that he must be displeased with us; we therefore hide ourselves from him, turn away from him, avoid the thought of him, are alienated from him. This is the greatest evil of sin, and this we may call the inward consequence of sin, because it affects our inward relation to God rather than our outward relation to the universe.

And now, how are we to be reconciled to God? How are we to be freed from this sense of guilt which falls on us in his presence, and makes us fear and shun him?

§ 5. Different Methods of obtaining Forgiveness.

There are two ways in which, when we have injured our brother, and so have become estranged from him, we may become reconciled again, and freed from a sense of shame in his presence. One is by endeavoring to atone for the evil we have done by acts of kindness, by expressions of penitence. So at last we may feel that we have done him far more good than evil; and though he may not forgive us or be reconciled to us, we, on our part, may feel freed from any shame in his presence, and be reconciled to him. The other way is by his coming to us, and proving to us, by his conduct and words, that he is not estranged from us by our bad conduct; that he loves us as ever. So he will overcome our evil by his good, and reconcile us to him.

The pagan nations in all ages and lands have taken the first way of being reconciled to God. Oppressed by a guilty fear of their terrible idols, they have brought as gifts to their altars what they had most valuable; they have hung their gold, their jewels, in the temple; they have slain their cattle on the shrine. Still unable to pacify their trembling hearts, they have gone farther, and sought to prove the sincerity at least of their repentance by self-inflicted tortures, and by giving even their children's lives to the bloody power whom they worshipped. Hence sacrifices: they originated in the [pg 221] very same feeling which induces a man to give a present to one whom he has wronged, to appease him.

Pagan religions are founded, therefore, wholly on the first mode of reconciliation. The offending party comes to him whom he has injured, and does something to pacify him. But these religions never brought peace to the heart of the worshipper. After the wretched mother had dropped her infant into the burning arms of Moloch, she still had no evidence that his wrath was turned away.