conditions of soul and body, and brings into disorder especially the sensuous side of human nature,' by exciting its impulses to fleshly lusts, which war against the soul, so that as the spirit disobeys God, the body disobeys the spirit, nay, even makes the latter its slave (Rom. vi. 12). It is the egotistic delight in the lusts and pleasures of self, and the dislike of all that is displeasing to self, and therefore a degeneration and perversion of joy in God, of delight in the Lord, who gives and can give to His children their hearts' desires (Ps. xxxvii. 4). It may become so powerful as to squander property for its gratification, and so work in opposition to avarice, though none the less selfish; it may also be of so rude, vulgar, and animal a kind as to be a disgrace, and deprive its subject of all honour; but even then it only differs from ambition in that one is a higher, the other a lower form of selfishness. It makes an idol of the beautiful, whether in nature or art, by loving it for its own sake alone, and not as a manifestation of the divine love and glory (Wisd. xiii. 3). According to difference of disposition it appears in the active forms of keen excitement, busy amusement, debauchery, or more passively as letting oneself be amused, as receiving enjoyment, or even as lazy idleness or slothful neglect. It descends from the more or less refined mental enjoyments to the coarsest carnal pleasures, to those works of the flesh which St. Paul enumerates Gal. v. 19-21. Among the three chief forms of evil lust cited by St. John (1 John ii. 16), the lust of the flesh corresponds with the love of pleasure, the lust of the eyes with covetousness, the pride of life with ambition; 2 and

1 Though Rothe, Theolog. Ethik, B. ii. p. 170 sqq., makes selfishness and sensuality two co-ordinate principles of sin, in which we, with Müller, cannot agree with him, he still perceives, p. 180, how they pass over into one another. Certainly the fall in its deepest sense was not a sensual minimum, but a spiritual maximum. St. Paul places φίλαυτοι first, and makes φιλάργυροι and αλαζόνες (seekers after property and honour, 2 Tim. iii. 2) follow, while the series closes with φιλήδονοι μᾶλλον ἢ φιλόθεοι.

2

Comp. Lactantius, divin. instit. I. vi. c. 19: Tres sunt affectus, qui homines in omnia facinora præcipites agunt, ira, cupiditas, libido.

the three temptations of our Lord, especially according to St. Luke's order, refer to the same.' So manifold is habitual sin in its chief forms, which all, according to the different dispositions in which they are inherent, assume special and individual forms, and at the same time mingle with and intersect each other in the most varying manner, and appear in their positive or negative effect in the outer world in an infinite multitude of actual sins. Actual sin, which is related to habitual sin as appearance to existence, is, however, no arbitrary production of the latter, but arises from acts of the will, which, depending on certain opportunities, are or even are not carried into effect, but which, when they become actions, are always affected by the fundamental tendency of the mind. It is not the external form of an action, which may be of extremely varied kind and often accidental or arbitrary, which determines its moral value or worthlessness, but that inward direction of the will which remains the same under very different appearances. Various, however, as these may be, still-and this is the scientific and practical result of our investigation-the whole incalculable variety of sins is based upon only one spiritual evil principle, upon the one universal sin of selfishness, whether upon its defective or affective side, and this selfishness is the contrary to the principle of all good, viz. love.

In the bond of love, man, though dependent on God and on his neighbour, is yet at the same time, because he feels and knows himself in union with them, free as a child of God's family. In selfishness, though free from God and his neighbour, he is yet dependent on their opposite, enslaved by divers lusts and passions, and the servant of the creature over which he ought to rule. Thus does sin delude man with the appearance of liberty, while it makes him a slave (John viii. 34).

1 Comp. also the recent excellent work, die Religion im Leben oder die Christliche Sittenlehre, by Dr. Heinrich Gelzer, Zurich 1839, third and fourth discourses.

In love alone is liberty, in love alone is truth, because it alone unites us with the object of knowledge, wherefore he who loveth not knoweth not God, who is love (1 John iv. 8); and he who loveth not his neighbour also misconceives him. Sin misconceives God, because it recognises not in Him the source and fulness of its life and happiness, has no longer its joy, its peace in Him, but seeks out of God what is only to be found in Him, and fixes its thoughts and aims on the creature. As love denies itself for the sake of God, selfishness for its own sake denies, if not the existence of God, at least His truly Divine nature, viz. His love, which alone makes holy and happy, and the righteousness of His commandments. From such a denial the first sin arose (Gen. iii., iv.), whence it is said of the devil that he remained not in the truth, but is the father of lies (John viii. 44). Falsehood and lying are nothing else than selfishness of thought and purpose, which do not conform to the object, but form themselves according to the subject, desire to have and represent things according to their own mind and interest.1 Denial of God leads to selfdeception, which leads the subject to seek and to imagine he finds, but does not, that which is in truth to be found only in God, so that idolatry and the deification of self or the creature, consequently sin against the first commandment, is at the root of all sin. Hence it has been justly affirmed that all sin is a lie, the deceptive enjoyment, as seductive as it is pernicious, combined with it, bearing testimony to its false and diabolic character,2 As the essence of righteousness is the true and humble resemblance to God, which from love fashions itself after its original and obeys Him, so is the essence of sin a false and arrogant resemblance of God, which from selfishness would be a law to itself, be independent

1 "The homogeneous principle of falsehood and of lust is selfishness," Nitzsch, System der Christlichen Lehre, § 105.

2 Non frustra dici potest, omne peccatum esse mendacium-mendacium est, quod quum fiat, ut bene sit nobis, hinc potius pejus est nobis.-Augustine, de civit. Dei, lib. xiv. cap. 4.

To such

like God, and obey only its own will and notions.1 perverted and revolutionary likeness to God does the lying serpent tempt (Gen. iii. 5). Evil is the revolution of the good, it is the good reversed, and therefore always presupposes the good, while the reverse is by no means the case; 2 evil is, moreover, no proper evil substance, but only the perversion of the good substance. Evil and good both manifest that aiming after likeness to God which is so inextinguishably impressed upon human nature, but with the contradictory contrast, that the good strives after it in the bond of love with the true God and obtains it, the evil desires it out of and against Him and does not obtain it. "Seek what you seek," says Augustine," but it is not where you seek it;" and the same Father, in his Confessions, B. ii. c. 6, thus impressively describes "the desire to be as God" of selfish sin in all its forms: Pride imitates greatness, because Thou, the only God, art exalted above all. And what does ambition seek but honour and glory, because Thou art to be honoured above all, and glorious to eternity? The powerful aim at being feared by their cruelty, but who is to be feared but God alone? The wanton aim at being loved by their caresses, but nothing is more caressing than Thy love. Curiosity assumes the appearance of a desire for knowledge, while Thou knowest all things perfectly. Even ignorance and folly veil themselves under the names of simplicity and innocence, while more simplicity and innocence than are in Thee are not to be found. Immoderate expenditure likes to be called sufficiency and superfluity, but Thou art fulness and the unfailing source of all delight. Extravagance throws out the shadow of liberality, but Thou art the most liberal giver of all good. Avarice

1 Suum sibi existendo principium per superbiam, non summo veroque principio cohærendo per obedientiam.-Augustine, de civit. Dei, c. 13.

* Bona sine malis esse possunt, sicut Deus ipse verus et summus; mala vero sine bonis esse non possunt, quoniam naturæ, in quibus sunt in quantam naturæ sunt, utique bonæ sunt.—Aug. de civit. Dei, c. II. and I. xii. c. 3 ; also Enchiridion de fide, spe et caritate, c. 13: Quid sat malus homo nisi malum bonum.

craves to possess much, and Thou possessest all things. Envy strives for pre-eminence, and what is more pre-eminent than Thou? Wrath seeks revenge, who avenges more justly than Thou? The sorrowful grieves over the things he has lost, and which his desire idolized, for he desired to be deprived of nothing, as Thou canst be deprived of nothing. So unfaithful to Thee is the soul that has departed from Thee, it seeks apart from Thee the purity and brightness, which it does not find until it returns to Thee. They who withdraw far from Thee and exalt themselves against Thee, still imitate Thee. And in thus imitating Thee, they show that Thou art the Creator of all nature and that it is impossible entirely to depart from Thee.

CHAPTER II.

ON THE UNIVERSALITY AND THE COMMENCEMENT OF SIN.

When we perceive that the essence of sin is selfishness, which is the opposite to true love, a thorough self-knowledge will undoubtedly lead us to perceive its universality. Egoism or selfishness is so universal-so indisputably universalamong men, that this very fact is a reason why many deny its sinfulness, and regard it as merely natural, as pertaining to man's original nature. Much as the doctrine of habitual or hereditary sin has of late been disputed, human nature itself has not altered because of the variety and alteration of opinion concerning it, but has ever remained the same. True and false doctrine have the same human being in view, and recognise him as the same, only their valuation is different. Who that knows human nature could mistake that, as man is at present constituted, the love of God and of his neighbour is not the fundamental power and impulse of his being, but that, on the contrary, egoism, as its fundamental feature, pervades