July 9 - HOW IS THE MOST FINE GOLD CHANGED

"And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God."
—Gen. iii. 8.

Sin has entered my world and my heart.

I describe man's first disobedience as the Fall. Never was there a truer word. This is the melancholy Fall of falls. This is an unnatural movement. This is a descent from the shining tablelands to the saddest depths. I was made upright; but I sought out many inventions. I was meant to look upward to the skies ; but I permitted Satan to bind me with a spirit of infirmity, and now my gaze is fastened on the ground beneath my feet. God desired me to walk with Him in a Paradise of holiness and obedience and use and praise; but I spurned so high a sphere and sacred a fellowship, and turned my face to what is lower and worse. Have I not travelled down and down? Am I not chargeable with debasement, depravity, degeneracy?

I acknowledge that it is not the popular idea of sin. The literature of imagination—much of the fiction of my time and some of its poetry—is skillful in painting the wicked thing, until it appears gay and brilliant and free. There are philosophies and theologies which apologise for it, and teach me to view it almost as a necessity for my fuller life, or as a halting-place in the march of my soul to what is higher and holier. Society has a hundred affectations and excuses that hide its foulness, as I read of Greek assassins who concealed their death-bringing daggers under the greenery of myrtle leaves. It is a fall upward, I am told, and not a fall downward. On the Amazon a famous naturalist discovered a spider which spread itself out as a flower ; but the insects lighting on it found destruction instead of sweetness and honey. My sin is my sin, evil, poisonous, fatal, although it transmutes itself into an angel of goodness.

It is best for me to give it its proper name, best to admit sorrowfully that I have fallen from my original estate of righteousness and kinghood. If the process is unnatural, if it is a reversal of God's intention for me and a contradiction of my chief end, surely the likelihood is that it will be remedied, and that some way of return will be devised by which I can go back to the loftier levels I have left. If there has been descent, will there not be ascent as well ? Because I have wandered so very far from my first love, an almighty wisdom and power will be required to accomplish my recovery. Because my downgoing has been so wilful and deliberate, a divine grace must interpose on my behalf. But the primal will of my Lord for me cannot be finally defeated. And my Fall will have its check and stop and ending, when I repair by faith to the Seed of the woman Who bruises the head of the serpent.

A " greater Man restores us, and regains the blissful seat." Since my case is desperate, I will put all my trust in Him.