When preachers nowadays
lament that we have lost the sense of sin, what they really mean is
that we have lost our combativeness: we no longer believe that we
must treat our foes with open and brutal violence, and we perceive
that such conduct is only pitting one sin against another. There is
no warrant in the Gospel for the combative idea of the Christian
life; all such metaphors and suggestions come from St. Paul and the
Apocalypse. The fact is that the world was not ready for the utter
peaceableness of the Gospel, and it had to be accommodated to the
violence of the world.
Now again the Christian idea is coloured by scientific and medical
knowledge, and sin, instead of an enemy which we must fight, has
become a disease which we must try to cure.
Sins, the ordinary sins of ordinary life, are not as a rule
instincts which are evil in themselves, so much as instincts which
are selfishly pursued to the detriment of others; sin is in its
essence the selfishness which will not cooperate, and which secures
advantages unjustly, without any heed to the disadvantage of
others.
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