the stream will be sweet...

I have mentioned before that our church Bible Study group is organized, this year, around themes, the first of which is sin. Today, Genesis 3 (the fall.) I am also teaching our 5th and 6th grade class this morning which happens to be looking at Gen. 4 (Cain and Abel.) Needless to say, my mind has quite been full of sin as I have prepared for today...

This from John Relly Beard from his "Reasons Why I Am A Unitarian in a Series of Letters"

"My Dear Edward,

I am a Unitarian, because Unitarianism is Destructive of Sin.—The common theology removes the punishment of sin, or leaves the sinner to suffer for ever. The last is a wretched issue, especially when the fate awaits the great majority of God's so-called children. The former is a delusion. The penalty of sin is never removed until the sin is renounced, and not renounced only, hut replaced by holiness ; and holiness is not a gift but an acquirement. These are facts in God's government of the world. They are laws of Divine providence. They are declarations of the will of God, and so demand attention from all men, especially those who assume to teach others. Recognising the behests of the supreme will, Unitarianism aims at nothing short of destroying sin. Knowing that sin and well-being are as incompatible as disease and comfort, it makes the removal of sin its great work. Causes rather than consequences it regards, assured that the stream will be sweet if the fountain is pure."

Blessings

our lamps will grow dim...

For the past four or five years, our church has carried on a bi-weekly Bible Study, usually centered around a particular book or group of books (letters of Paul.) This year, I am organizing our study by theme and, in a shameless bid for increased participation, am starting with SIN.
The "pious' John Emery Abbott speaks of two kinds of sin in this excerpt:

"DANGERS FROM WITHIN TO BE GUARDED AGAINST.

Besides the dangers which arise from without, there are dangers from within. Of these, I can mention but two. The first is, that there is a tendency within us to negligence and sloth. In the concerns of religion, we are continually urged to procrastinate our duties; to seek excuses for consulting our ease ; to rest contented with idle wishes; to compromise for our neglect, by forming fruitless resolutions; or to find in those external observances which cost us little, a substitute for the earnest piety and practical godliness, which demand constant vigilance and persevering labor. Most of what we term sins of infirmity, are indeed sins of carelessness, and arise, not from the weakness of nature, but from neglect of attention, of watchfulness, or of proper exertion. The christian character is one of progress,—of improvement. Its qualities are not like human knowledge, which, when once acquired, will, with very little effort, remain with us. We cannot for a time neglect the cultivation of our hearts, or the regulation of our lives, and return after long neglect and find them as they once were. We must watch over them, and spend our exertions upon them, with unwearied patience and persevering resolution, or we rapidly shall sink from the height we have gained. While we slumber, our lamps will grow dim. Whenever we consult our ease, whenever the vigor of our exertions is weakened, the religious character will decay. We may perceive, indeed, no sudden change, no alarming deficiency; but our progress will be like the decline of the day ; the light of life will gradually withdraw itself,—the shades of night will silently deepen over us, and melt imperceptibly into each other, till nothing at last remain, but coldness, darkness, and gloom.
The other danger is, that which arises from some peculiar evil propensity. No one, who reflects on his own character, can avoid being conscious, that there is a sin which most easily besets him, which, in spite of all his exertions, is continually rising up to trouble him. We are in peculiar danger from this source, not only because it is so deeply seated, because it operates so secretly and powerfully, and because it is so difficult to conquer; but also because, in the very point at which we are most weak and assailable, our conscience and moral judgments are most apt to be blinded. Where our peculiar sin is concerned, we are apt to interpret the requirements of the gospel in a lax and indulgent manner; to imagine that while in other points we strive to be faithful, our neglect in this single case, is pardonable. But, in truth, this propensity, whatever it be, is our peculiar trial; it is the very case in which our vigilance and exertion are most important, and by which the sincerity of our christian character is principally to be tested. We ought, then, to strive with the greatest earnestness to conquer the sin which thus besets us; to avoid, with peculiar care, whatever may tend to inflame and strengthen it; and to exercise a resolute self-denial as to many indulgences, which those around us, who have not the same disposition, may partake without danger."

Blessings

Blessed Unrest...

Sin is a word profoundly out of fashion in Unitarian Universalist circles. In fact, I would argue that a personal sense of sin is out of fashion even in evangelical circles where it seems to largely be used to identify the practices of others. There are some good reasons for this circumstance: the word sin can and often has been used as a psychological battering ram and its demise in this context is welcome. And yet the loss of a personal sense of sin has its negative side as well. Here is Rev. Rufus Ellis in his sermon, "To Him it is Sin"

"Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. — James, iv. 17.


IT is sin not to live up to our light. Young and old, wise and simple, we are sinners so long as we fail to live up to our light. It may be twilight, or it may be noontide; the light may be very dim or very bright; the good that we know to do may be little or much ; our moral growth may have just begun, or we may have made much progress in goodness, — but it is true, all the same, that if we are not living up to our light it is sin. The revelation of truth and right is a disclosure of obligation, a call to obedience...

'Therefore to him who knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.' The good may be something unexpected, unusual, not a mere conventional good, — like a paltry dole to the poor, a pittance from your hoard, a crumb from your luxurious table, an hour in your week, a word which costs you nothing. The good may be a nobler style of living, simplicity perhaps amidst surrounding luxuries, a consecration of your leisure to work for which the world pays no wages and will scarce give you thanks. The good may be very hard, because very good and very beautiful and very blessed... Christianity is a revelation of good things to be done on earth, — of human purity, simplicity, justice, brotherhood, service; and to him who knows these things and doeth them not, to him it is sin, and Christianity is preached to him in vain unless he has a consciousness of sin.
The hope of every human soul and of human society is bound up with blessed and fruitful sorrow, — this living sense of sin. Let this fail, and moral progress is at an end. Come to look upon your shortcomings as misfortunes, cease to deplore and strive against them as sins, and you have ceased to live, or at least have fallen asleep; and if there is to be no change you will sleep on forever, and might as well die to-day as any time. Life is not mere continuance,— it is progress; it is the receiving of larger and larger measures of truth and love; it is movement upward and onward. It is not well for us to be content with ourselves so long as we know any good which we are not doing, trying with all our might and with all the help we can get from God to do. It is a blessed unrest which moves us to toil and prayer; we can do without it no more than the sick man can do without the pain, or even agony, which sends him to the physician, and engages him in self-control and the struggle for health and life.
It is one of the crowning excellences of Christianity that it awakens and strengthens and keeps alive this consciousness of sin by its appeals for an exceeding righteousness and its display of a grand example of holy living, while at the same time it directs and tempers the feeling by its revelation of inexhaustible love and help."

A crowning excellence indeed. Blessings