'Ye have sold _yourselves_,' and become authors of your own bondage. No
sin is forced upon any man, and no one is to blame for it but himself.
The many excuses which people make to themselves are hollow. Now-a-days
we hear a great deal of heredity, how a man is what his ancestors have
made him, and of organisation, how a man is what his body makes him,
and of environment, how a man is what his surroundings make him. There
is much truth in all that, and men's guilt is much diminished by
circumstances, training, and temperament. The amount of responsibility
is not for us to settle, in regard to others, or even in regard to
ourselves. But all that does not touch the fact that we ourselves have
sold ourselves. No false brethren have sold us as they did Joseph.
The strong tendency of human nature is always to throw the blame on
some one else; God or the devil, the flesh or the world, it does not
matter which. But it remains true that every man sinning is 'drawn away
of _his own_ lust and enticed.'
After all, conscience witnesses to the truth, and by that mysterious
sense of guilt and gnawing of remorse which is quite different from the
sense of mistake, tears to tatters the sophistries. Nothing is more
truly my own than my sin.