SIN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 263, 5 November 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

SIN.

j[By DR. J. H. LINTON, Bishop in Persia.)

Sin is not a popular word to-day. We talk about complexes, and inhibitions, and repressions, arid rationalisation. ■They are nice long technical words, but ire prefer to spell them quite simply, just sin. We are apparently indebted to some modern writers, like Bertrand Russell, with some help, perhaps, from Aldous Huxley, for doing away with sin. They •wculd have us believe that sin no ldhger exists. But, unfortunately for us, they have not done away with temptation, slnd ain is what happens when I fall into temptation. Sin is anything that comes (between mo and God, breaking the fellowship; or it is anything that comes between me and someone else, breaking the fellowship. Sin may be either failing to do what I know to be God's will, or refusing to do it. That is to say, I can destroy life, either by starving or by poisoning. Either would be effective. Sin may be just omitting to do God's will. In that gospel story of the marriage feast, that man -was expelled from the feast, not for anything he had done, but just because he had omitted to put on the wedding garment. And the barren flg tree was curbed, not because it had a great number of leaves upon it, but because it did not bear fruit.

"Just as you look on the things which' are seen or uneeen your life will be commonplace or heroic, your labour drudgery or service, your mind a fountain pf bitterness or sweetness, your outlook a dead wall or the eternal horizon. What a handful of bare facts are the incidents of your life! There are not enough to make a paragraph from the register of your birth to the register of your death. Cast this dry need into the fostering soil of imagination, and what a harvest I"—John Wateon.

'A Prayer: Grant us, 0 Lord, the desire to be used in Thy service, and to be helpful to our fellow men and women. Give us grace to be kind and tenderhearted. May we have a sincere desire for what is honest, and just, and true, and may we covet earnestly the best gifts, so that our experiences, through Thy gracei, may serve for the strengthening of our faith, the purifying of our hearts, and the sanctificatioq of our character ffor--€hrist'aH6ako, [Amgnit I