kind of slur upon the effort that any man makes to do what he knows
to be right, but this I proclaim, or rather my text proclaims for me,
that, giving full weight and value to all that, and admitting the
existence of variations in degree, the identity is deeper than the
diversity; and there is 'not a just man upon earth that doeth good
and sinneth not.'

Oh, dear friends! it is not a question of degree, but of direction;
not how far the ship has gone on her voyage, but how she heads. Good
and evil are the same in essence, whatever be their intensity and
whatever be their magnitude. Arsenic is arsenic, whether you have a
ton of it or a grain; and a very small dose will be enough to poison.
The Gospel starts with the assertion that there is no difference in
the fact of sin. The assertion is abundantly confirmed. Does not
conscience assent? We all admit 'faults,' do we not? We all
acknowledge 'imperfections.' It is that little word 'sin' which seems
to bring in another order of considerations, and to command the
assent of conscience less readily. But sin is nothing except fault
considered in reference to God's law. Bring the notion of God into
the life, and 'faults' and 'slips' and 'weaknesses,' and all the
other names by which we try to smooth down the ugliness of the ugly
thing, start up at once into their tone, magnitude, and importance,
and stand avowed as _sins_.

Well now, if there be, therefore, this universal consciousness of
imperfection, and if that consciousness of imperfection has only need
to be brought into contact with God, as it were, to flame thus, let
me remind you, too, that this fact of universal sinfulness puts us
all in one class, no matter what may be the superficial difference.
Shakespeare and the Australian savage, the biggest brain and the