To be near unto God - pagina 519

takes care of himself, because, in case his sin be-

came known, it would injure his good name. A third strives against a temptation because indulgence would ruin him financially. A fourth puts a mark against a given sin because in his narrower circle of life it is sharply condemned. Only think of Sabbath desecration. And in this way, by all sorts of persons, one sin or another is resisted from reasons that have nothing to do with the real struggle against sin. With not a few, indeed, there is no mention whatever of a conscious motive, and all their striving against this or that sin springs from a certain moral instinct, from the judgment of public opinion, or from the desire to be decent. In this way profanity has become noticeably less in our civilized circles, but far more because it is now considered coarse and uncivilized, than from fear of the holy God. All such resistance against all sorts of sin, however, should not be judged from the heights as indifferent. Because of its very contagiousness every open sin is most dangerous. Apart from its guilt before God, sin by itself is moral sickness, and everything that opposes the outbreak or progress of this sickness is gain. Only the struggle against sin in any form, without higher motive, brings no spiritual gain. David's saying: "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned," remains the fundamental rule. And only when we strive against sin, because sin opposes God, does our struggle obtain the holy, the higher character. The struggle against sin, because sin strives against God and God strives against sin, brings us near unto God. The struggle then remains no longer merely moral, but it becomes religious an

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