Sometimes there opens to us
the picture of this thing that we might be, and then there are truly the
trial moments of our life. Then we lift up ourselves and claim our
liberty or, dastardly or cowardly, slink back into the sluggish
imprisonment in which we have been living. How does all this affect that
which we are continually conscious of, urging upon ourselves and upon
one another? How does it affect the whole question of a man's sins? Oh!
these sins, the things we know so well! As we sit here and stand here
one entire hour, as we talk in this sort of way, everybody knows the
weaknesses of his own nature, the sins of his own soul. Don't you know
it? What shall we think about those sins? It seems to me, my friends,
that all this great picture of the liberty into which Christ sets man,
in the first place does one thing which we are longing to see done in
the world. It takes away the glamour and the splendor from sin. It
breaks that spell by which men think that the evil thing is the glorious
thing. If the evil thing be that which Christ has told us that the evil
thing is--which I have no time to tell you now--if every sin that you do
is not simply a stain upon your soul, but is keeping you out from some
great and splendid thing which you might do, then is there any sort of
splendor and glory about sin? How about the sins that you did when you
were young men? How can you look back upon those sins and think what
your life might have been if it had been pure from the beginning, think
what you might have been if from the very beginning you had caught sight
of what it was to be a man? And then your boy comes along.
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