A slave abides not in the house for ever.' Therefore the very fact that the service of sin is so hard a slavery shows it to be unnatural, abnormal, and capable of a termination. All the world has dimly hoped that it was so, if not from love of good, at all events from weariness of evil, and from pain of conscience. But no man has been sure of it, apart from the influence of revelation. It is Christ alone who makes us certain that this universal condition is yet an unnatural one, from which restoration is possible for us all. He alone shows us that the black walls of the prison-house where we toil, solid seeming, high above our power to scale, and clammy with the sighs of a thousand generations though they be, are undermined and tottering. Deliverance is possible. For, in the light of God's revelation, we see that the slave-master is as usurper. Sin is clearly not natural to man, as God meant him to be, howsoever it may seem to have entwined itself around his life. It is something supervening, not original; a deformity, not a part of the ideal by which God made him.
The most superficial glance at our own nature and condition, the constitution of our being, our capacities or relations, is enough to show that. The witnesses are within us. Look at these minds of ours that can originate and entertain thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof that they were born for immortality,' at those hearts with their rich treasures of transcendent affections wasted, as some drunken spendthrift throws handfuls of gold among a ragged mob; at these wills so weak and yet so strong, ever craving for some absolute authority to guide them, and yet ever impotently trying to be a law unto themselves'; at these consciences, so sensitive and yet so dull, waking up only when the evil is done, like careless warders who lock the prison doors with all safety after the prisoner has fled, powerless to prevent but strong to avenge--voices which have no means of getting their behests obeyed, and yet are the echo of the supreme, personal Lawgiver's voice. Think of the manifest disproportion between ourselves as we are, and as we know we might be; remember that in this region might and ought are the same. And then say whether this universal condition of sinfulness is not plainly and in the deepest sense of the word--unnatural; a fungus, not a true growth; a monstrosity or abnormal development; a diseased excrescence or wen, and not sound, healthy flesh.
Then, if so, it is clear that there is no such relation between a sinful man and his sin as that deliverance from it is impossible. It must be possible to part them, and to leave the man stronger for the loss of what made him weak, and more himself by the plucking off him of the venomous beast that has fastened upon his life. Somehow or other it must be possible to separate me from my sin, to cast that behind God's back into the depths of the sea, and to set me before His face in light and love. If we are slaves of Sin, then we may be transferred from its household and brought to our true home in our Father's house. Here, then, is the blessed hope for us all. Howsoever the fetters may have galled and mortified the limbs and eaten into the stiffened wrists, they may be struck off. No man is condemned to a hopeless necessary continuance in evil. We may have been living all our days in it, and, so far as in us lies, may have corrupted and perverted our whole nature. Be it so. Still the foul thing has not become so intertwined with our life that it cannot be wrenched away. No matter what we are, for us all there is a possibility of deliverance. For criminals below the gallows with the rope around their necks, for those who have gone farthest into the far country of forgetfulness of God, and there have wasted themselves in riotous living, ay, and for those who are harder to touch and more hopeless than publicans and harlots--the sleek, orthodox, respectable Scribes and Pharisees, the church and chapel going people, saturated with the form of religion and uninfluenced by its power, for all, freedom is possible.
And let me remind you that men have always cherished those convictions; even when they seemed to have the least reason for them, have cherished them obstinately in spite of history and of experience. They have tried to set themselves free, and their attempts have come to nothing; and yet, after all failures, this hope' has sprung immortal in the human breast.' People who have tried in vain to cure themselves of some awkward habit, some peculiarity of manner, some intonation of voice, yet believe that somehow or other there is a power fit to break from them all the chains of evil and to set them free. Strange, is it not? Pathetic, tragic, except on one hypothesis. I know few things sadder--unless we believe in Christ, the Deliverer, as I hope most of us do--than that indestructible hope with which a thousand sinful generations have lived, and yet have died without its fulfilment. What countless unfulfilled aspirations, what baffled trust, what gleams of light that faded and seemed treacherous as the morning red that dies into rainy grey before the day is old! And are the noblest visions, then, the falsest? and are we to believe the bitter creed that smiles sadly at these hopes as airy dreams? or is it true--as the world has believed, though it knew not how its hope was to be fulfilled--that the tyranny which has ruled the earth and built high the black walls of its prison house round all humanity is, after all, a usurpation which had a beginning later than man, and will have an end?
True, we cannot make the division between ourselves and our sin, nor effect the deliverance. It is like some cancer--a blood disease. We may pare and cut away the rotting flesh--the single manifestations of the evil we can do something to reduce. But the source of these is floating through the veins, and comes pulsing from the heart. A deeper cure than our surgery is needed, a transfusion of fresh blood from an untainted source. Sin is not our personality, and so we may have it removed and live. But sin has become so entwined with ourselves that we cannot separate the tangled mass. The demoniac in the Gospels, who in his confused consciousness did not know which was devil and which was man, and when the question was put, What is thy name?' gave the awful answer, which blends so strangely the voice of both, My name is legion, for we are many,' could not shake off the demon that rode him. No more can we. And yet it can be dragged from its lair. Rending and tearing, convulsions and foaming, wounds and semi-death may accompany the separation. Better these than the strong man armed, keeping his goods in peace.' The voice that said, Thou foul spirit, I charge thee come out of him,' has power still.
Whence arise these hopes, cherished in spite of all failures? They are like morning dreams which the proverb tells us are true. Their fulfilment is made probable by the very fact of their existence; for God never sends mouths, but He sends meat to feed them.' Their fulfilment lies in Him who fulfils the unconscious prophecies' and the conscious cravings of heathendom and humanity--even in the Christ who is all that the world wants, and more than allthat we or our brethren have dared to hope. So much then for the first idea, contained in these words--that of the possibility, inherent in the very nature of the case, of emancipation from the burden and bondage of sin. The next verse goes on to declare how this possibility is converted into fact. So we have --
