I. Up to a certain point, men of all schools of religious and philosophical thought are agreed, both as to the facts of the moral state of the world, and as to the nature of the improvements required for it. They differ widely in their theories of the essence of morality, or the foundation of moral obligation; they differ in the ideals that they hold up to men as embodying the supremest moral excellence; they differ in the attractive power of their ideal, and in the strength of the motives they offer for pursuing it, and for resisting temptation; but they all agree as to their elementary moral precepts. And it is not too much to say that all serious moralists are agreed, further, that according to the simple rule for knowing good from bad, the actual state of the moral world is bad and not good. The world is wicked; that we start with as a fact not as a part of the Christian or any other theory of the way that the world ought to be conducted, but as to the state in which the world is; a fact which any complete theory of the world must account for, and which any competent guide of the world, if such there be, will have to remedy. To convince the individual of sin is a harder task. The one witness who is competent to adduce all the facts has an interest in keeping silence; the one judge whose verdict is on earth final has an interest in acquittal; and this being so, it is small wonder that an acquittal is often pronounced unhesitatingly, is oftener still pronounced after a decent hesitation and with some moderate reserves. But the world is condemned, whenever it is really judged, and the condemnation of the world must, in the eyes of any thoughtful person, throw grave suspicion on the acquittal of the individual. II. The only way to treat sin like this is to make a clean sweep of it altogether. Here there can be no question of adjusting a machine that is just out of gear, of harmonising elements salutary in themselves, though at present imperfectly combined. It may be that the evil mass is composed of things originally good, but that does not alter the fact that it is now evil, incurably evil. Let a flood sweep over it, and blot out all its features, for so, and so only, we may hope to see it washed clean. A little washing and rubbing here and there will not be enough; the washing of a foul world like ours must do no less than wash us out of ourselves must rub off our whole self; in fact, we want a washing of regeneration, a washing which shall be, first of all, a death unto sin, and so make a possibility for a new birth unto righteousness. When this washing is effected, when the sinner has died again to his old life and started again in the new, then, and then only, is he capable of receiving the "renewing of the Holy Spirit," then only is it possible for that power to enter his heart, from which "all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works do proceed." There is no doubt that those men were right who, a hundred years ago or less, declared to a self-satisfied world that this was the Gospel, that the true cure for all moral evil was, not sound moral advice, too good to be followed, not earnest moral effort which the sinful soul was unable to make, or at least to sustain, but the reception of a cleansing power from without, that the soul must be supernaturally, miraculously, divinely, undeservedly, delivered from its evil past, if it were ever to start on a new and better life, if it were ever to be made natural to it to do good, or possible for it to deserve well. Nothing short of a miracle can put a sinner in the way of repentance, and that the blood of Christ has, as history proves, exercised that miraculous power, that when a man has believed in that blood, he has been saved from his sins, even as experience proves the reality of sin, so it proves, not less divinely though unhappily less universally, the reality of repentance and salvation through faith in Christ.
W. H. Simcox, Oxford Undergraduates' Journal,March 17th, 1881.
References: Titus 3:4-7. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 564; Outline Sermons to Children,p. 264.