[Sidenote: Depravation and Deprivation.]

[Sidenote: Natural Standards.]

[Sidenote: The Decalogue.]

While we hold that this tendency, this natural sluggishness in laying
hold of the things of the higher nature is not in itself guilt, it
becomes so by the voluntary adoption of the lower forces as the guide of
life. Nature has her own decalogue. There is a law written upon our
hearts. The wasting of power by anger, jealousy, envy, covetousness and
the like, and the degradation following their expression in acts of
revenge, concupiscence, and mere rapacity, are known without revelation
by all races which have not suffered the downward evolution. The
literatures prove this back even to the days of Hamurabi. Thus natural
standards of temper and conduct are seen to exist, below which men may
not live without loss, and hence there are natural laws to disobey which
is sin. The table given on Sinai, though given to Moses, was in the
world long before Moses. But higher sanction was given it by the
lawgiver, and the highest by the re-enactment of the Decalogue by Jesus
Christ.

[Sidenote: The Heart Law.]

[Sidenote: Effects of Sin.]

[Sidenote: Characteristics of Sin.]

[Sidenote: Results of Sin.]