Whoever needed to explain to a company
of grown men and women what the cry of the soul for its release from
passion is? Every generation has its secret pessimists, brooding over
the anarchy of the spirit, the issues of a distracted life. We need
not ask with Faust, "Where is that place which men call 'Hell'?" nor
wait for Mephistopheles to answer,
"Hell is in no set place, nor is it circumscribed,
For where we are--is Hell!"
Now, it is from such central and poignant experiences as these that
men have been constrained to look outward for a God. For these mark
the very disintegration of personality, the utter dissipation of
selfhood. That is the inescapable horror of sin. That is what we mean
when we say sinners are lost; so they are, they are lost to their own
selves. With what discriminating truth the father in the parable of
the lost boy speaks. "This, my son," he says, "was dead though he is
alive again." So it is with us; being is the price we pay for sinning.
The more we do wrong the less we are. How then shall we become alive
again?
It is out of the shame and passion, the utter need of the human heart,
which such considerations show to be real that men have built up their
redemptive faiths. For all moral victory is conditioned upon help from
without. To be sure each will and soul must strive desperately, even
unto death, yet all that strife shall be in vain unless One stoops
down from above and wrestles with us in the conflict.
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