(_a_) The revolt of the created will against the Divine Will; or
(_b_) A voluntary violation of a commandment of God.
2. God is the Supreme Lord of all creation, and Author of our being.
His Will should be the absolute law of all created beings. But as He
made men and angels in the plenitude of freedom, He gave them wills,
wills wholly free, and He set before them His law as the way of
happiness, revealing to angels and men that so long as they conformed
their wills to His Will they would be happy. Men and angels, though
created free, were for all that dependent on God; but certain angels,
with Satan at their head, revolted--they set their wills in opposition
to the Will of God, from dependence they aimed at independence.
The fall of Adam and Eve was different; instead of a complete revolt of
the will against the Will of God, it was an inclination away from God's
Will in one particular, a transgression of a commandment, not an act of
rebellion.
The revolt of the will against God is a deliberate resistance to
the just and holy laws which He has laid down, and it attacks the
immutable order He has appointed as the relation between Himself and
His creatures. It is also a wilful attempt to change the destiny of the
creature.
Thus Satan rebelled through pride, dissatisfied with what God had
ordained as to his place in the hierarchy of created intelligences. He
desired to be higher or different from what he was. His rebellion was
against the supremacy of God.
3. Now it is but exceptional to find man wilfully, knowing what he
is about, rise up in open and deliberate rebellion against God;
nevertheless, such revolt is found to be among men, though it may be
hoped not always, or not often _conscious_ revolt. Those rebel against
God who--
(_a_) Profess _Atheism_. They deny His existence, His law, His
providence. God has put in every conscience a witness to His being,
to His law, to His providence, and to profess Atheism is not only to
reject revelation, but to resist the inner testimony of the Conscience.
It is incipient, encouraged, and becomes habitual, till the whole
attitude of the inner nature is one of antagonism to God.
(_b_) Who resist _God's moral law_. Men may be ready to admit that
there is a God in Heaven, but as His law limits and controls their
liberty, they strive against the restraints He imposes on them, and
submit only to such laws as they are forced by the law of the land, or
by social society to observe. They cast God out of their consciences.
(_c_) Who resist _God's truth_. Men may accept the fact that God exists
in Heaven, and that He has imposed on men a moral law, but they reject
His revelation regarding the facts of the Faith, the articles of the
Creed, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Resurrection, the Commission
to the Church, the Sacraments. All wilful resistance to the faith as
taught by the Church, the depository of Revelation, is thus a rebellion
against God.
(_d_) Who resist _God's Church_. The Church is the kingdom of God on
earth, and all schism is a revolt against His authority as committed
to His Church, and in as far as it is _conscious_ and deliberate, is
rebellion against God, different only in degree to that of Satan and
his apostate angels in Heaven. Where this is in ignorance, it is of
course otherwise. God will always consider the imperfection of man's
knowledge, and if a man resists His truth, His moral law, His Church,
through invincible ignorance, He will excuse such rebellion.
[Illustration]
Third Wednesday in Lent.
_THE NATURE OF SIN._
(CONTINUED.)
1. We have considered the first and most terrible Sin, that of
the Revolt of the creature against the Creator. We might indeed
consider all transgression as a rebellion of the will against the
Divine Will, but it is not always so. It is not a rebellion of the
will altogether, and consciously against God as Ruler, but it is a
transgression of a single command, either through stress of temptation
or through carelessness. It may, however, be deliberate and wilful, a
transgression of one law, but without the intention of stepping into
absolute and acknowledged hostility to God.