also, that communion with God is not possible unless we are fighting
against our sin, and have some measure of holiness. We begin
communion with Him, indeed, not by holiness, but by faith. But it is
not kept up without the cultivation of purity. Sin makes fellowship
with God impossible. 'Can two walk together, except they be agreed?'
'What communion hath light with darkness?' The delicate bond which
unites us in happy communion with God shrivels up, as if scorched,
at the touch of sin. 'If we say that we have fellowship with Him,
and walk in darkness, we lie.'

2. Notice the universal apostasy. Two points are brought out in the
sombre description. The first is moral corruption; the second,
violence. Bad men are cruel men. When the bonds which knit society
to God are relaxed, selfishness soon becomes furious, and forcibly
seizes what it lusts after, regardless of others' rights. Sin saps
the very foundations of social life, and makes men into tigers, more
destructive to each other than wild beasts. All our grand modern
schemes for the reformation of society will fail unless they begin
with the reformation of the individual. To walk with God is the true
way to make men gentle and pitying.

Learn from this dark outline that God gazes in silence on the evil.
That is a grand, solemn expression, 'Corrupt before God.' All this
mad riot of pollution and violence is holding its carnival of lust
and blood under the very eye of God, and He says never a word. So is
it ever. Like some band of conspirators in a dark corner, bad men do
deeds of darkness, and fancy they are unseen, and that God forgets
_them_, because they forget God; and all the while His eye is
fixed on them, and the darkness is light about them. Then comes a
further expression of the same thought: 'God looked upon the earth.'