lusts that war against the soul, and to bridle the animal that is in
him. Those who have done so most honestly know best how hard it is,
and may fairly ask, Is this useless repetition of the threadbare
injunction all that you have to say to us? If so, you may as well
hold your tongue. A wild beast sits at my door, you say, and then
you bid me, 'Rule thou over it!' Tell me to tame the tiger! 'Canst
thou draw out Leviathan with a hook? Wilt thou take him a servant
for ever?'

I do not undervalue the earnest and sometimes partially successful
efforts at moral reformation which some men of more than usual force
of character are able to make, emancipating themselves from the
outward practice of gross sin, and achieving for themselves much
that is admirable. But if we rightly understand what sin is--namely,
the taking self for our law and centre instead of God--and how deep
its working and all-pervading its poison, we shall learn the tragic
significance of the prophets question, 'Can the leopard change his
spots?' Then may a man cast out sin from his nature by his own
resolve, when the body can eliminate poison from the veins by its
own energy. If there is nothing more to be said to the world than
this message, 'Sin lieth at thy door--rule thou over it,' we have no
gospel to preach, and sin's dominion is secure. For there is nothing
in all this world of empty, windy words, more empty and windy than
to come to a poor soul that is all bespattered and stained with sin,
and say to him: 'Get up, and make thyself clean, and keep thyself
so!' It cannot be done.

So my text, though it keeps itself within the limits of the law and
only proclaims duty, must have hidden, in its very hardness, a sweet
kernel of promise. For what God commands God enables us to do.