What is Sin?

It is a debt, a burden, a thief, a sickness, a leprosy, a plague, a poison, a serpent, a sting; everything that man hates it is; a load of curses and calamities beneath whose crushing, most intolerable pressure the whole creation groaneth. Name me the evil that springs not from this root —the crime that I may not lay at its door.

Who is the hoary sexton that digs man a grave? Who is the painted temptress that steals his virtue? Who is the murderess that destroys his life? Who is the sorceress that first deceives, and then damns his soul? Sin.

Who with icy breath blights the fair blossoms of youth? Who breaks the hearts of parents? Who brings old men's grey hairs with sorrow to the grave? Sin.

Who, by a more hideous metamorphosis than Ovid oven fancied, changes gentle children into vipers, tender mothers into monsters, and their fathers into worse than Herods, the murderers of their own innocents? Sin.

Who casts the apple of discord on household hearths? Who lights the torch of war, and bears it blazing over trembling lands? Who, by divisions in the Church, rends Christ's seamless robe? Sin.

Who is this Delilah that sings the Nazarite asleep, and delivers up the strength of God into the hands of the uncircumcised? Who, winning smiles on her face, honeyed flattery on her tongue, stands in the door to offer the sacred rites of hospitality, and, when suspicion sleeps, treacherously pierces our temples with a nail?

What fair Siren is this, who, seated on a rock by the deadly pool, smiles to deceive, sings to lure, kisses to betray, and flings her arms around our neck, to leap with us into perdition? Sin.

Who turns the soft and gentlest heart to stone? Who hurls reason from her lofty throne, and impels sinners, mad as Gadarene swine, down the precipice, into a lake of fire? Sin.— Guthrie.