Must we sin?

Introduction

Sin ! this is the problem of the ages. For this world there is no other. He who can solve the sin problem can relieve the burden of the race. He who can destroy sin can save the world. Thank God, a Savior is found, a sin-destroyer is at hand in the Person of Jesus Christ! “He shall save His people from their sins.” But this necessitates the desire for salvation from sin, the yielding of heart, life and will to Him.

The trouble is, men have too little consciousness of sin — its heinousness, its exceeding sinfulness. Men have confused crime with sin and sin with crime. The writer remembers how that years ago he read the confession of David, “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight.” (Psalm 51:5). I said, “No, David, you have sinned against society; against the home; against the family; against the race.” But there the Scripture was, unchanged, written by inspiration; recorded in the word of truth — “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned.”

Accepting the record as inspired, I sought its meaning, and soon saw that all sin is against God. You do not sin against men, only against your Maker, your Redeemer.

Let me see: A man commits murder. What is it? It is crime, a violation of human law. He is tried by the courts and is sentenced to be hung. As a crime, he has expiated his guilt. He cannot be punished twice for the same crime. But hold ; he has also sinned against God, and God will judge him and sentence him to Hell.

Now suppose he hates another ; but dreads to face the courts and be hung, so he refrains from committing the act of murder. He has sinned but has not committed a crime ; hence the courts have no case against him, but God has. ‘‘He that hateth his brother, his fellowman, is a murderer.” And God's sentence hangs over him as though the deed had been done.

So with theft: A man may covet the money in a bank and watch his opportunity to burglarize the institution ; but no suitable chance occurs. The law of man has no case against him ; he has committed no crime ; but before God he is a full-fledged thief. Sin lies in the heart, in the will, and is complete and entire there, without the act. “He that looketh to lust, hath committed adultery already.” The law of man has no case; there is indeed no crime; but there is sin; full-fledged, horrible, soul-destroying sin. 0, that men might realize the enormity of sin against a holy God !

Brother Sweeten has given us a valuable, true, a searching, really a powerful book. Read it ; circulate it ; pray God to use it. And give the warning everywhere against the blighting, corrupting, God-defying thing we call SIN !

L. L. Pickett.

Preface

For sometime it has been in the mind of the writer to put into the hands of earnest, honest and candid seekers after light a plain and concise treatise oh the all-important question, “Must we sin?”

When we look out upon the busy scenes of human life and activity, and remember that we are living in an age of hurry and hustle, we recognize the fact that the average person, whether he can or not, will not take time to delve into an exhaustive treatise of the sin question. Yet of all questions in the world that need our eager, earnest investigation, there are none of such magnitude and importance as the question of sin. Upon this question hinges the happiness of individuals and nations, both here and hereafter. Sin is either conducive to happiness, or detrimental to happiness; and if upon the sin question hinges true happiness, we ought to know it, and govern ourselves accordingly. Therefore, if we must sin, how much or how little is a question of vital importance. And if provision is made to completely deliver us from all sin, it is imperative that we should know it.

We feel that in pleading the case of righteousness against sin, we are pleading a cause of greater importance than was ever plead in any earthly court. Sin is a grave and infinite offense, and is, therefore, punishable with a grave and infinite punishment. Sin has made every human being in the world the defendant that must appear before the Judge of all the earth to hear His decision as to their destiny, which is based solely and exclusively on the sin question. It is, therefore, the paramount need of humanity to so order their lives that they will be in perfect harmony with the teaching of the ‘'thus saith the Lord,” which is the one source of authority on this subject.

What or how much God can do for a person is not left to a few church dignitaries, but to the word of God. It is the object of the writer, therefore, to give a fair and impartial discussion of the subject in this little volume, both from reason and revelation, without fear or favor of any particular creed or denomination. If we are told we must sin, upon what is such a statement based? If we are told we need not sin, what is our authority for such a declaration?

We make no apology for presenting this little volume to a world already filled with innumerable books ; neither have we written its contents with the ideia of a superior knowledge of the subject; nor have we attempted to treat the matter in any other than a concise and plain manner. We, therefore, urge the reader to give us a fair and unprejudiced hearing, that we may be mutually blest and profited together as we study the question of the world’s greatest malady, in the light of reason and revelation.

We remember that at one time a certain newspaper, commenting on the work of an evangelist, said, “He is neither handsome nor eloquent, but he has the happy faculty of telling the truth.” If the same can be said of this little volume, and it proves and convinces inquirers on the subject, and is a blessing to souls, we will be gratified, and amply repaid for all our efforts. Nothing would please the writer more than to know that his humble efforts to turn souls from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, had met with a success. To this end we ask the reader to follow us carefully and prayerfully through its contents, and earnestly to try to ascertain the correct solution to the question, “Must we sin?”

Howard W. Sweeten.

Chapter I. The Origin Of Sin

As we start penning the lines of this little volume, our nation is in a mighty conflict for liberty and humanity. The fight is on; we are in the midst of the most gruelling and terrible war the world has ever known; the scripture, “Nation shall rise against nation,” is being fulfilled, without a doubt; and thus the terrible conflict threatens to involve all the nations of the earth, and has already taken on such magnitude as to be called “The World War.”

From the time that sin befell the human family, the seeds of strife have been sown broadcast in the world, until, look where you will, in every nook and corner of the earth, you will find discord and friction. It began with righteous Abel and wicked Cain, and from thence on down to the present, history reveals page after page of contention and sorrow. Who can picture the conflicts bell

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tween individuals ; the political conflicts ; the scenes of rebellions and revolutions; the struggle to obtain and maintain certain governmental rights and territorial boundaries? Who can picture the sorrows of domestic life, or even the sectarian prejudice that has produced religious division, until, undoubtedly, many times God’s work has been hindered, and the Holy Spirit grieved by the lack of harmony among the professed followers of the living God?

What rebellions, and insurrections, and conflicts are recorded on the pages of both sacred and profane history! The thunders of the artillery of one battle have scarcely died away, until another great struggle is upon us; so that the earth has become reddened with the blood of many wars, and the years of universal peace among the nations are greatly exceeded by the years of national strife.

Gur own country, a peace-loving nation, has had, on an average, a war about every twenty-two years; while thirty-three years is about the longest period in which we have been blest with national peace. The present

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great war (world war) is no doubt the greatest conflict of all time ; yet great as it is, and much as may depend upon its results, there is, and has been, a conflict of greater magnitude waging upon the earth for six thousand years, without a single moment of truce. This surpasses the great world war ; in fact, all wars combined cannot compare from any standpoint with this conflict. It is called the conflict of the ages, and is very properly such, for it was launched in the Garden of Eden, and outweighs all wars combined, in length of time, in relation to numbers involved, and in the matter of final results. This is seen by the fact that all the wars of the world have used a comparatively small portion of the earth’s population, and only a nation now and then, here and there ; but the conflict, to which we refer, has laid its gory hands upon every soul ever born into the world, but here three worlds are vitally concerned, heaven, earth and hell. Here our struggles are limited in results to certain governmental rights, indemnities, and territorial boundaries ; but upon the result of this great conflict of the ages, the fight with sin,

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hinges our eternal destiny for weal or woe, life or death, for heaven or hell.

No man upon earth can be neutral. “He that is not with me is against me,” says Jesus ; and the very fact that thousands of people are indolent, idle, and indifferent, doing nothing for God, brands them as allies of Satan and children of hell. Thus you will observe in the case of the man in the parable of the talents, who returned the one talent, that he was called an unprofitable servant; bound hand and foot and cast into outer darkness, where there was wailing and gnashing of teeth. What had he done? Was he a sinner above all others? Certainly not. He had only done all that any man need to do to be lost. What was it? Nothing. Doing nothing has been, and will be, the cause of the damnation of many souls.

If there is a God, (and I do not say if because I doubt His being, but merely to make the point logical) with moral attributes such as our Bible teaches, and such as we believe Him to possess, it is plainly evident there is something in the world that God never made; something that is a disturbing ele-

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ment ; that is rebellious against His kingdom and government ; that is anarchistic in principle ; that is not subject to the law of God. It is the author of every sorrow, every heartache, every disappointment, every defeat of righteousness, and is at the bottom of all the world’s troubles. It made a devil out of an archangel; it crucified God’s only begotten Son ; and that something, God, in His infinite wisdom, has pleased to call sin S-l-N, SIN.

You and I, dear reader, have never seen a world like God made ; all that our poor mortal eyes have ever been privileged to look upon has suffered from the curse of the dreadful malady of sin. We have never seen a man as God originally made him. All the human family we have ever seen has been cursed by sin. They are subject to aches and pains, distorted with disease, bent with age, and are destined soon to wither and die.

When God made the world, He made it pure and holy; man was holy; hence the world was happy. Man walked in sweet fellowship with his Maker, and basked in the smile of his Creator. There was no antagonism; nothing foul nor unclean; no friction in

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all of God’s creation; nothing grating nor discordant. The world was at peace, and all creation in loving harmony. The land indeed was delightsome; its valleys were carpeted with velvet green, and its hillsides were decked with beautiful, thornless vegetation; every tree that grew in its fertile soil was pleasant to look upon, while trees whose fruits were good for food grew in abundance. The tree also of “the knowledge of good and evil” grew in the midst of this Edenic Paradise.

At this period of our world’s history, you might have sought from the river to the ends of the earth for misery, pain or guilt, and found only holiness, happiness and harmony. But alas! It did not long remain in this Edenic state. It was soon invaded by a subtle and powerful foe ; and by one man, we are told in the Book, sin entered into the world, and “death by sin, and so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned.” (Horn. 5:12).

Sin is an infinite malady ; and undoubtedly had its existence before the foundation of the world. Somewhere out in the great eter-

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nity sin evidently had its origin; possibly, owing to the fact that God endows His intelligent creatures with volition, and that whatever is susceptible to use is susceptible also to abuse, a being chose disobedience to his creator and fell from the heights of holiness to the depths of sin.

There are many things which we do not know; perhaps, because it is not necessary for us to know them, and because they are beyond our finite conception ; hence, no man knows the exact location of heaven or hell, though they both exist and have a definite location; for there can be no place without location ; and Jesus said in regard to heaven, “I go to prepare a place for you.” ( Jno. 14 : 2.) Of hell, the rich man said : ‘’Send him to my father's house, for I have five brethren, that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment." (Luke 16: 28.)

Though God has clearly revealed the existence of both heaven and hell, yet for some cause, in His infinite wisdom, He has not revealed their exact location. Perhaps it is because such a revelation would not make the

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motive for repentance any stronger, and perhaps because if He should tell us its exact location, our acquaintance with space outside the earth is so limited, we would know very little, if any more, than we do at the present.

So, likewise, with the origin of sin; our knowledge of events before the foundation of the world is decidedly limited. Whether sin had its origin with Lucifer, or away back ages before, we do not know any more than we know where eternity had its beginning; it is beyond our sphere of thought, and the only way possible for us to know exactly how, when, and where it began is by Divine revelation ; and God, for some wise purpose, has seen fit to make no such revelation to His creatures, as the knowledge of its beginning is of little consequence. All that we are, or need to be, concerned about, is its origin upon earth, and its effects upon our present and future being.

The Scripture reveals the fact that a being called Satan rebelled against God and His government, and being cast away, encountered Adam and Eve in the Garden, and sue-

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eeeded in beguiling them into like disobedience. Thus by the disobedience of this man, sin entered the sacred precincts of the beautiful Garden; the occupants were driven from their happy abode; the beautiful Garden became a place of thorns and thistles; the earth, which had basked in the smile of its Creator, was now blackened by the curse of sin ; and in less than fifteen hundred years, owing to the increased spirit of disobedience, God was compelled to destroy with one great deluge all that He had made.

Today every cold wintry blast, every terrific storm, every volcanic eruption, every barren field, every tearing briar, all combine in awful accusation against man and his unholy deeds. Every breaking heart, every distorted frame racked with pain, every disappointed life, every defeated soul, owes all its sorrows to sin.

One writer, speaking of sin and its origin, says; “Sin is an immense river running through the secret channels of hell ; it broke out upon this world in the Garden of Eden. Ever enlarging, this river flows on around the world ; no flowers grow on its banks ; no

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foliage waves beside its murky tide; everlasting lightning pencils every angry wave, and hell’s terrific thunders bound from bank to bank with awful crash. Surely no one would visit this awful place; but, alas! its shores are lined from source to mouth with human wretches. They crowd to plunge into the fearful tide ; all sexes, all colors, all conditions, all classes. The mother decks her daughter in the height of fashion, and side by side they plunge into the stream. Into this current the young man, thoughtless and laughing, runs. The old man follows, with his hoary locks streaming in the wind like the shredded rigging of a storm-ridden ship ; he pauses a moment on the verge, but is soon hurled into the seething tide.” What a picture this writer has given us ! We need only to look about us on every hand and behold its dire results.

It is an established fact that sin is here. It is not a theory, not a fancy, not an allegory, but an awful, indisputable fact, Christian Science and a few other heresies to the contrary, notwithstanding. Laugh at it all you will, deny it all you will, yet it is here in

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all its gory criminality ; its fruits are manifest daily in an indisputable manner. If there is no such thing as sin, what is it that has reddened the earth with crime ? If there is no sin, what is it that causes that vast army of one hundred thousand men every year to fill drunkards' graves and an alcoholic hell; and to go to the dreadful judgment to meet that God who has said: “No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God?" If there is no sin, what causes that army of fallen girls to bury their faces in their hands and weep for the days of their virtue and purity ? From whence does all the brawling strife, contention, malice, enmity and hatred proceed, if not from sin ? Reason all you will, sin is here both in principle and practice. It stalks through our streets at mid-day, and mows down its victims by countless thousands, victims who are helpless to resist its power. As light is universal though some may deny it, and shut their eyes and refuse to admit any of it, so the malady of sin is universal, though we may dispute and deny its existence. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." (Rom. 3:23.)

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And as the apostle writes to the Ephesians, we “are all by nature the children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3), not by a long life of transgression, but by nature.

Thus sin is a universal, inherent malady, coming to all of Adam’s posterity through the offense in the Garden of Eden. Hence, Paul writes to the Romans, “Therefore by the offense of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation” (Rom. 5:18), and “by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned.” (Rom. 5 :12) . And as by grace we are separated from the devil and joined to God, so by sin we are separated from God and joined to the devil. Sin is no legitimate part of our being; it is a poisonous malady, a fungus growth, an abnormal condition, a parasite of the soul, a moral deformity planted in our common father Adam, through his Edenic transgression, and inherited by all his unfortunate posterity.

Of all the afflictions upon earth, there are none equal in gravity to the plague of sin upon the soul. What leprosy is to the body,

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sin is to the soul, and more. What insanity is to the mind, sin is to the soul, and more. It is more dire in its results than cancer, more deadly than tuberculosis, more contagious than smallpox. The fact that the whole world is contaminated by the offense of one man speaks of its dreadful nature. The fires of hell remind us of its evil; the horrors of conscience remind us of its guilt ; the dying Saviour reminds us of its gravity; while the hardness of men’s hearts tells us in unmistakable terms of its dreadful effect. We ought no more to envy the sinner his sinful and worldly pleasure, than we would a man his cancer or leprosy. Who would envy a man his money, if that money were to cast his soul into hell ? Who begrudges a man his entertainment at the theater, his caresses in the ball-room, his fine clothes, his daily luxuries, his hours of revelry and frolic, if these are purchased at the infinite price of his soul?

Summing up the matter of sin as a whole* and taking into consideration the effect it produces, and the inevitable result it brings, we cannot but say : It were better for one to

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be an invalid all his life, and to be thrown upon the mercy of the world as an object of charity, than to be afflicted with sin, and finally cast by an infinite hand into outer darkness, where there shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Yea! he had better be an idiot, and be unconditionally saved, than to be an intelligent, responsible creature, and refuse to break with sin and be cast into hell.

Let the reader bear in mind that the malady and curse of sin are upon the race ; sin is on our hands, and some disposition must be made of the matter. To ignore it will not settle it; to ridicule it does not evade it; in fact, a question of such magnitude and importance must not be evaded, we must inevitably face it; why not now before it is too late? True, there are other questions in life that demand our attention; our education, our business, our moral and social standing, our health, our duties as a citizen, and so on ; but after all, if we succeed in achieving success in all these things, and fail to properly solve and settle the sin question, our lives have been sadly and woefully misspent; for

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upon this question hinges not temporal and material prosperity and happiness, but eternal destiny.

To this purpose, therefore, the pages of this volume are prayerfully dedicated, that we may know the truth concerning the most important question in our lives, and find a proper solution to it, for upon this hangs our destiny, both here and hereafter.

Chapter II. What Is Sin?

Inasmuch as it is our purpose, in the following pages of this book, to discuss the sin problem, it will be necessary to first give the reader a proper analysis of the subject. “What is sin?” and “What is not sin?” and “How shall we deal with it?” are questions of vital importance. No first class physician would undertake to prescribe a remedy for a patient until he had first properly diagnosed the malady. In order to know the remedy, we must first know the disease; hence, the caption of this chapter, “What is sin?”

At this particular time, our reader's attention is called not to the remedy for sin, nor to the possibility of deliverance from sin, but merely to the nature and effects of sin. Sin is two-fold in its existence, actual sin and inherent sin. One denotes action, the other condition ; one is what we do, the other is what we are. Actual sin is defined in 1 John 3 :4, “Whosoever committeth sin trans- 26

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gresseth also the law : for sin is a transgression 1 of the law.” Here sin is defined in its actual sense. Actual sin consists of an act of transgression of God’s law. Inherent sin is the sin principle, sometimes referred to as original sin, moral defilement, depravity and similar terms. One writer expresses actual sin as the “shoots of sin,” and inherent sin as “the roots of sin.” Sin, therefore, is not confined to action alone ; but is a dark, crooked, wicked, rebellious, devilish nature, inherited by all of Adam’s posterity as a result of his fall in the Garden of Eden. Inherent sin is clearly defined in such Scriptures as Eph. 2 :3. “All by nature the children of wrath.” Nothing could make us the children of wrath but sin; yet, this we are, says the apostle, “by nature .” In referring to the same thing in Rom. 7:17 he calls it “the sin that dwelleth in me;” which is clearly and distinctly separate in character from actual sin, in that one denotes inherent principle, and the other volitional action. In thus describing sin, we are in perfect harmony with the teaching of all orthodox churches, as will be noted by the following

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extracts culled from the creeds of some of the leading denominations.

We quote from the “Shorter Catechism of the Westminster Assembly,” published by the Presbyterian Board of Publication, page 5, question 14, “What is sin?” Answer. Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of the law of God.” Thus we have the two-fold nature of sin expressed in the “ trangression of” and “conformity unto ” the law of God. On page six, question eighteen, “Wherein consists the sinfulness of that estate wherein man fell?” Answer: “The sinfulness of that estate wherein man fell consists in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin; together with all the actual transgressions which proceed from it.”

Thus the Presbyterians acknowledge the two-fold nature of sin in the expressions, “the corruption of his whole nature,” and “with all the transgressions that proceed from it.”

This catechism goes on further to say:

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“Question sixteen. Did all mankind fall in Adam's transgression? Answer: The covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself, but for his posterity, all mankind condescending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him and fell with him in his first transgression." This is not only a portion of catechism, but better still, is in perfect accord with the teaching of the “Thus saith the Lord," which is in fact, the only authority.

The “Bible Class Catechism," published by the “American Baptist Publication Society" of Philadelphia, also interprets the sin question in like manner. On page thirteen, question forty-five, “What is sin? Answer: Sin is any want of harmony in our hearts and lives with the revealed will of God." Here is the double nature of sin recognized again in the expression “hearts" (inward condition) and “lives" (outward action). The heart is the seat of the affections; its condition determines our character ; as is indicated by such Scriptures as Prov. 23:7, “As he thinketh in his heart so is he," and Prov. 4:23, Mark 7:21-23 and other*. “Out

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of the heart proceed the issues of life.” A man is never any better than his heart ; the heart is the barometer to both moral and spiritual character.

But to further discuss this catechism. Question forty-six. “What was the effect of Adam's sin upon himtself? Answer: His apostasy from God was complete, and in his nature was no restoring principle.” Question forty-seven. “How did this effect his posterity? Answer: They inherited a disposition of alienation from God, man's moral nature being vitiated at birth, and in consequence all mankind are now sinners. (Rom. 5:12,. Rom. 3:9) ”

Before leaving the matter of orthodox: teaching on this subject from the standpoint of church creeds, let us briefly note what the Methodists have to say on the subject. We quote from the joint catechism of the M. E. Church and the M. E. Church, South, published by Jennings & Graham, page thirty-six, question one hundred and fourteen. “What is sin? Answer: Sin is any violation of God's law, or any lack of conformity thereto.” Here again we see the acknowl-

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edgment of its two-fold nature as taught byother denominations and the word of God. Investigation might be carried further, but it is useless to do so, for we would find that both creeds and scripture teach practically the same, and that in reminding the reader of this fact, we only wish him to know that the truth recorded on these pages is perfectly orthodox and sound.

Webster, who is an accepted authority in defining terms, also says sin is “a transgression of God's law." Here is sin in the actual sense. He also declares it is “moral deficiency in character." Here it is in being or principle ; this is in harmony with the Scripture ; the first denoting the conduct of a volitional creature in transgressing God's law, as defined in 1 John 3 :4 ; the latter denoting inherent character, as defined in Rom. 7:17, and in other places. It is useless to quote further authorities, for all are in harmony in regard to this matter. We think, therefore, that no apology is necessary in presenting a truth so universally taught and accepted.