We are not machines or automata, but free and conscious and active agents, and so must contend with evil as well as rejoice in good. Conflict and difficulty are essential for our training and development: even for our existence at this grade. With their aid we have become what we are; without them we should vegetate and degenerate; whereas the will of the Universe is that we arise and walk.
VIII
THE MEANING OF SIN
Q. 8. What is sin?
A. Sin is the deliberate and wilful act of a free agent who sees the better and chooses the worse, and thereby acts injuriously to himself and others. The root sin is selfishness, whereby needless trouble and pain are inflicted on others; when fully developed it involves moral suicide.
CLAUSE VIII
The essence of sin is error against light and knowledge, and against our own higher nature. Vice is error against natural law. Crime is error against society. Sin against our own higher nature may be truly said to be against God, because it is against that purpose or destiny which by Divine arrangement is open to us, if only we will pursue and realise it.
Sin is a disease: the whole of existence is so bound together that disease in one part means pain throughout; the innocent may suffer with the guilty, and suffering may extend to the Highest. The healing influences of forgiveness, felt by the broken and the contrite heart, achieve spiritual reform though they remove no penalty. Every eddy of conduct, for good or ill, must have its definite consequence.
We have high authority for the statement that hard circumstances and disabilities, not of our own making, are mercifully taken into account; while privileges and advantages weigh heavily in the scale against us, if we prove unworthy: