Sin committed is indelibly written on the heart of the doer.
'The heart,' of course, in Hebrew means more than merely the supposed
seat of the affections. It is figuratively the centre of the spiritual
life, just as physically it is the centre of the natural. Thoughts and
affections, purposes and desires are all included, and out of it are
'the issues of life,' the whole outgoings of the being. It is the
fountain and source of all the activity of the man, the central unity
from which all comes. Taken in this wide sense it is really the whole
inner self that is meant, or, as is said in one place, 'the hidden man
of the heart.' And so the thought in this vigorous metaphor may be
otherwise put, that all sin makes indelible marks on the whole inward
nature of the man who does it.
Now to begin with, think for a moment of that truth that everything
which we do reacts on us the doers.
We seldom think of this. Deeds are done, and we fancy that when done,
they are done _with_. They pass, as far as outward seeming goes, and
their distinguishable consequences in the outward world, in the vast
majority of cases, soon apparently pass. All seems evanescent and
irrecoverable as last year's snows, or the water that flowed over the
cataract a century ago. But there is nothing more certain than that all
which we do leaves indelible traces on ourselves. The mightiest effect
of a man's actions is on his own inward life. The recoil of the gun is
more powerful than the blow from its shot. Our actions strike inwards
and there produce their most important effects. The river runs
ceaselessly and its waters pass away, but they bring down soil, which
is deposited and makes firm land, or perhaps they carry down grains of
gold.
This is the true solemnity of life, that in all which we do we are
carrying on a double process, influencing others indeed, but
influencing ourselves far more.
Consider the illustrations of this law in regard to our sins.
Now the last thing people think of when they hear sermons about 'sin'
is that what is meant is the things that they are doing every day. I
can only ask you to try to remember, while I speak, that I mean those
little acts of temper, or triflings with truth, or yieldings to passion
or anger, or indulgence in sensuality, and above all, the living
without God, to which we are all prone.
(a) All wrong-doing makes indelible marks on character. It makes its
own repetition easier. Habit strengthens inclination. Peter found
denying his Lord three times easier than doing it once. It weakens
resistance. In going downhill the first step is the only one that needs
an effort; gravity will do the rest.
It drags after it a tendency to other evil. All wrong things have so
much in common that they lead on to one another. A man with only one
vice is a rare phenomenon. Satan sends his apostles forth two by two.
Sins hunt in couples, or more usually in packs, like wolves, only now
and then do they prey alone like lions. Small thieves open windows for
greater ones. It requires continually increasing draughts, like
indulgence in stimulants. The palate demands cayenne tomorrow, if it
has had black pepper to-day.
So, whatever else we do by our acts, we are making our own characters,
either steadily depraving or steadily improving them. There will come a
slight slow change, almost unnoticed but most certain, as a dim film
will creep over the peach, robbing it of all its bloom, or some
microscopic growth will steal across a clearly cut inscription, or a
breath of mist will dim a polished steel mirror.
(b) All wrong-doing writes indelible records on the memory, that awful
and mysterious power of recalling past things out of the oblivion in
which they seem to lie. How solemn and miserable it is to defile it
with the pictures of things evil! Many a man in his later years has
tried to 'turn over a new leaf,' and has never been able to get the
filth out of his memory, for it has been printed on the old page in
such strong colours that it shines through. I beseech you all, and
especially you young people, to keep yourselves 'innocent of much
transgression,' and 'simple concerning evil'--to make your memories
like an illuminated missal with fair saints and calm angels bordering
the holy words, and not an _Illustrated_ Police News. Probably there
is no real oblivion. Each act sinks in as if forgotten, gets overlaid
with a multitude of others, but it is there, and memory will one day
bring it to us.
And all sin pollutes the imagination. It is a miserable thing to have
one's mind full of ugly foul forms painted on the inner walls of our
chamber of imagery, like the hideous figures in some heathen temple,
where gods of lust and murder look out from every inch of space on the
walls.
(c) All wrong-doing writes indelible records on the conscience. It does
so partly by sophisticating it--the sensibility to right and wrong
being weakened by every evil act, as a cold in the head takes away the
sense of smell. It brings on colour-blindness to some extent. One does
not know how far one may go towards 'Evil! be thou my good'--or how far
towards incapacity of distinguishing evil. But at all events the
tendency of each sin is in that direction. So conscience may become
seared, though perhaps never so completely as that there are no
intervals when it speaks. It may long lie dormant, as Vesuvius did,
till great trees grow on the floor of the crater, but all the while the
communication with the central fires is open, and one day they will
burst out.
The writing may be with invisible ink, but it will be legible one day.
So, then, all this solemn writing on the heart is done by ourselves.
What are you writing? There is a presumption in it of a future
retribution, when you will have to read your autobiography, with
clearer light and power of judging yourselves. At any rate there is
retribution now, which is described by many metaphors, such as sowing
and reaping, drinking as we have brewed, and others--but this one of
indelible writing is not the least striking.
Sin is graven deep on sinful men's worship.
The metaphor here is striking and not altogether clear. The question
rises whether the altars are idolatrous altars, or Jehovah's. If the
former, the expression may mean simply that the Jews' idolatry, which
was their sin, was conspicuously displayed in these altars, and had, as
it were, its most flagrant record in their sacrifices. The altar was
the centre point of all heathen and Old Testament worship, and altars
built by sinners were the most conspicuous evidences of their sins.
So the meaning would be that men's sin shapes and culminates in their
religion; and that is very true, and explains many of the profanations
and abominations of heathenism, and much of the formal worship of
so-called Christianity.
For instance, a popular religion which is a mere Deism, a kind of vague
belief in a providence, and in a future state where everybody is happy,
is but the product of men's sin, striking out of Christianity all which
their sin makes unwelcome in it. The justice of God, punishment,
sinfulness of sin, high moral tone, are all gone. And the very horns of
their altars are marked with the signs of the worshippers' sin.
But the 'altars' may be God's altars, and then another idea will come
in. The horns of the altar were the places where the blood of the
sacrifice was smeared, as token of its offering to God. They were then
a part of the ritual of propitiation. They had, no doubt, the same
meaning in the heathen ritual. And so regarded, the metaphor means that
a sense of the reality of sin shapes sacrificial religion.
There can be no doubt that a very real conviction of sin lies at the
foundation of much, if not all, of the system of sacrifices. And it is
a question well worth considering whether a conviction so widespread is
not valid, and whether we should not see in it the expression of a true
human need which no mere culture, or the like, will supply.
At all events, altars stand as witnesses to the consciousness of sin.
And the same thought may be applied to much of the popular religion of
this day. It may be ineffectual and shallow but it bears witness to a
consciousness of evil. So its existence may be used in order to urge
profounder realisation of evil on men. You come to worship, you join in
confessions, you say 'miserable sinners'--do you mean anything by it?
If all that be true, should it not produce a deeper impression on you?
But another way of regarding the metaphor is this. The horns of the
altar were to be touched with the blood of propitiation. But look! the
blood flows down, and after it has trickled away, there, deep carven on
the horns, still appears the sin, _i.e._ the sin is not expiated by the
sinner's sacrifice. Jeremiah is then echoing Isaiah's word, 'Bring no
more vain oblations.' The picture gives very strikingly the
hopelessness, so far as men are concerned, of any attempt to blot out
this record. It is like the rock-cut cartouches of Egypt on which time
seems to have no effect. There they abide deep for ever. Nothing that
we can do can efface them. 'What I have written, I have written.'
Pen-knives and detergents that we can use are all in vain.