The sacrifices of every land witness to the fact that humanity all
over the world, and through all the ages, and under all varieties of
culture, has been dimly conscious that its deepest need was that the
fact of sin should be dealt with. I know that there are plenty of
modern ingenious ways of explaining the universal prevalence of an
altar and a sacrifice, and the slaying of innocent creatures, on other
grounds, some of which I think it is not uncharitable to suppose are
in favour mainly because they weaken this branch of the evidence for
the conformity of Christian truth with human necessities. But
notwithstanding these, I venture to affirm, with all proper submission
to wiser men, that you cannot legitimately explain the universal
prevalence of sacrifice, unless you take into account as one--I should
say the main--element in it, this universally diffused sense that
things are wrong between man and the higher Power, and need to be set
right even by such a method.

But I do not need to appeal only to this world-wide fact as being a
declaration of what man's deepest need is. I would appeal to every
man's own consciousness--hard though it be to get at it; buried as it
is, with some of us, under mountains of indifference and neglect; and
callous as it is with many of us by reason of indulgence in habits of
evil. I believe that in every one of us, if we will be honest, and
give heed to the inward voice, there does echo a response and an amen
to the Scripture declaration, 'God hath shut up all under sin.' I ask
you about yourselves, is it not so? Do you not know that, however you
may gloss over the thing, or forget it amidst a whirl of engagements
and occupations, or try to divert your thoughts into more or less
noble or ignoble channels of pleasures and pursuits, there does lie,
in each of our hearts, the sense, dormant often, but sometimes like a
snake in its hybernation, waking up enough to move, and sometimes