To have hearkened to His commandments would have enabled Him to let His
kindness have its way.
It is not only our act contrary to God's Law, but the source of that
act in our antagonistic will, which fatally bars out the possibility of
God's intended good from us. It is 'not hearkening' which is the root
of not doing.
That possibility of lifting up our puny wills against the
all-sovereign, Infinite Will is the mystery of mysteries.
The fact that the mysterious possibility becomes an actuality in us is
still more mysterious. If we could solve those two mysteries, we should
be far on the way to solve all the mysteries of man's relation to God,
and God's to man.
A will absolutely submitted to Him is His great ideal of human nature.
And that ideal we all can thwart, and alas, alas! we all do. It is the
deepest mystery; it is the blackest sin; it is the intensest folly.
Sin is negative as well as positive. Not to hearken is as bad as to act
in dead opposition to.