Sit down, and take pen and paper, and count up the sins that you have probably sinned since you first knew good from evil. Sit down, I say, and make a sum. Grant for a moment that there have been, on an average, fifteen hours in every twenty-four during which you have been awake, and an active and accountable being.—Grant for a moment that in each one of these fifteen hours you have sinned only two sins. Surely you will not say that this is an unfair supposition. Remember, we may sin against God in thought, word, or deed. I repeat, it cannot be thought an extreme thing to suppose that in each waking hour you have, in thought, or word, or deed, sinned two sins. And now add up the sins of your life, and see to what sum they will amount.
At the rate of fifteen waking hours in a day, you have sinned every day thirty sins!—At the rate of seven days in a week, you have sinned two hundred and ten sins every week!—At the rate of four weeks in every month, you have sinned eight hundred and forty sins every month!—At the rate of twelve months in every year, you have sinned ten thousand and eighty sins every year!—And, in short, not to go further with the calculation, every ten years of your life you have sinned, at the lowest computation, more than ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND SINS!
Reader, I do beseech you to look calmly at this sum. I defy you to disprove its correctness. I ask you, on the contrary, whether I have not entirely understated your case? I appeal to you, as an honest person, whether it be not true, that many an hour, and many a day in your life, you have sinned incessantly? I ask you confidently, whether the sum would not be far more correct if the total number of your sins was multiplied ten-fold?—Oh, cease from your self-righteousness! Lay aside this proud affectation of “not being so very bad,” in which you are trying to wrap yourself up. Be bold enough to confess the truth. Listen not to that old liar, the devil. Surely in the face of that damning sum which I have just cast up, you will not dare to deny that “you have many sins.”
I leave this part of my subject here, and pass on. I sadly fear that many a reader will run his eye over what I have been saying, and remain unconvinced and unmoved. I have learned by mournful experience that the last thing a man finds out and understands, is his own state in the sight of God. Well saith the Holy Ghost, that we are all by nature “blind,” and “deaf,” and “dumb,” and “asleep,” and “beside ourselves,” and “dead!” Nothing, nothing, nothing will ever convince man of sin but the power of the Holy Ghost. Show him hell, and he will not flee from it; show him heaven, and he will not seek it; silence him with warnings, and yet he will not stir; prick his conscience, and yet he will remain hard. Power from on high must come down and do the work. To show man what he really is, needs the Holy Spirit of God.
Reader, if you have any feeling of your own sinfulness, you ought to thank God for it. That very sense of weakness, wickedness, and corruption, which perhaps makes you uncomfortable, is in reality a token for good, and a cause for praise. The first step towards being really good, is to feel bad. The first preparation for heaven, is to know that we deserve nothing but hell. Before we can be counted righteous we must know ourselves to be miserable sinners. Before we can have inward happiness and peace with God, we must learn to be ashamed and confounded because of our manifold transgressions. Before we can rejoice in a well-grounded hope, we must be taught to say, “Unclean! unclean! God, be merciful to me a sinner!”
Reader, if you love your soul, beware of checking and stifling this inward feeling of your own sinfulness. I beseech you, by the mercies of God, do not trample on it, do not crush it, do not take it by the throat and refuse to give it your attention. Beware of taking the advice of worldly men about it. Treat it not as a case of low-spirits, disordered health, or anything of the kind. Beware of listening to the devil’s counsel about it. Do not try to drown it in drink and revelling; do not try to drive over it with horses, and dogs, and carriages, and field-sports; do not try to purge it away by a course of card-parties, and balls, and concerts. Oh, reader, if you love your soul, do not, do not treat the first sense of sin in this miserable fashion. Do not commit spiritual suicide,—do not murder your soul!
Go rather and pray God to show you what this feeling of sin means. Ask Him to send the Holy Spirit to teach you what you are, and what He would have you to do. Go and read your Bible, and see whether there is not just cause for your being uncomfortable, and whether this sense of being “wicked and bad” is not just what you have a right to expect. Who can tell but it is a seed from heaven which is one day to bear fruit in Paradise in your complete salvation? Who can tell but it is a spark from heaven which God means to blow up into a steady and shining light? Who can tell but it is a stone from above before which the devil’s kingdom in your heart is to go down, and a stone which shall prove the first foundation of a glorious temple of the Holy Ghost?—Happy indeed is that man or woman who can go along with my first remark, and say, “IT IS TRUE: I HAVE MANY SINS.”
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
