The Nature of Sin

by Archbishop, Cardinal Henry Edward Manning

"It is expedient for you that I go: for if I go not, the Paraclete will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send him to you; and when he is come, he shall convince the world of sin." — John 16:7-8

Since last Lent began, how many souls that were gathered here have passed into eternity. And before another Lent begins, how many will stand before the Great White Throne. Who among us shall be the first to go to judgment? Let us, therefore, enter upon this Lent as if knowing it to be our last; let us begin this time of conversion to God as if we were sure that another would never be granted to us. "Bring forth, therefore, fruits worthy of penance, for now the axe is laid to the root of the tree; every tree, therefore, that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire." (Matt. 3:8, 10).

These thoughts have made me choose a subject, sad indeed and severe in all its parts, but vital to every one of us, necessary for our salvation, the root and foundation of all — I mean sin, its nature, its effects, its consequences. And I have chosen this subject because there can be none other so necessary, and because the precept of the Church, binding us all to Confession and Communion at Easter, begins more urgently to warn the conscience of every member of the Catholic Church. I therefore appeal to you all. I appeal to your conscience to fulfill, each one of you for yourselves, this duty of salvation; and not for yourselves alone. Fathers and mothers, warn your families and households; friends and neighbors, warn with humility and charity all whom you know to be neglecting the practice of their duty to God.

The words of our Divine Saviour reveal to us what is the work and office of the Holy Ghost: "He shall convince the world of sin." Both in the old creation and in the new, both before the Incarnation of the Son of God and after His Ascension into Heaven, it has been, and it is, and it will be to the end of the world, the work and the office of the Holy Ghost to convince the world of sin; that is to say, to convince the intellect, and to illuminate the reason of man to know and to understand what sin is; and also to convict the consciences of men, one by one, of their sinfulness, and to make them, each one, conscious that they are guilty before God. This is the office of the Holy Ghost; and in all time, from the beginning of the world, the Holy Spirit of God has illuminated and convinced the intellect and the conscience of men to know God and themselves, and thereby to understand in some degree the nature of sin. But the fullness of that light and illumination was reserved unto the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost came in person to dwell forever in the Mystical Body of Christ.

In the beginning, when God made man, He made him sinless, and He gave him the light of the Holy Spirit; so that man knew God, His holiness and perfections; and he knew himself, and the nature in which God had created him. He knew the law of God; but he did not know sin, because as yet the law had not been broken. He could not know it, because he had as yet no experience of the transgression of the law, with its bitterness and its fatal consequences; but when man sinned against God, then all was changed. Then he was conscious of his guilt, and strove to hide himself from the face of his Maker; but he only hid God from his own conscience. He could not escape from the presence nor from the eye of God; but he could hide the light of God's presence from himself — and this he did. Therefore, from the beginning of time, God in His mercy, by the working and light of His Spirit, taught men to know, in some measure at least, His own perfections and their own sinfulness; but it was only like the twilight preceding the noonday. We are in the noonday; and if in the noonday we are blind to the perfections of God and to our own sinfulness, woe to us in the day of judgment.

Therefore, my purpose is to begin by the most general outline of what sin is, and to lay down certain broad but simple principles which I shall have to apply hereafter in our future subjects. I therefore purpose first to speak of the nature of sin, of what it is, and of certain distinctions of sin, which will be necessary for us hereafter to refer to.

I. First, then, what is sin? There are many definitions of it, and one is this: it is the transgression of the law. "Sin is the transgression of the law." (1 John 3:4). God is a law to Himself; His perfections are the law of His own nature; and God wrote upon the conscience of man, even in the state of nature, the outline of His own perfections. He made man to know right from wrong; He made him to understand the nature of purity, justice, truth and mercy. These are perfections of God, and on the conscience of man the obligations of this law are written. Every man born into the world has this outline of God's law written upon him, and sin is the transgression of that law. Another definition of sin is: any thought, word, or deed contrary to the will of God.

Now, the will of God is the perfection of God Himself — holy, just, pure, merciful, true; and anything contrary to these perfections in thought, word, or deed is sin. The conformity of man to the will of God, to the perfections of God, is the sanctity or the perfection of the human soul; and the more he is conformed to the will of God, the holier and more perfect he is. Therefore, to be at variance with God is to be deformed; and the monstrous deformity of the human frame is not more humbling nor more hideous — nay, it is not humbling and hideous, compared with the deformity of the soul. When the soul is unlike to God, when it is departed from the perfection of God, when instead of purity there is impurity, instead of justice there is injustice, instead of truth there is falsehood, instead of mercy there is cruelty, instead of the perfections of God there is the direct contrary of those perfections: no deformity or hideousness that can strike the eye is so terrible.

The malice, then, of sin consists in this, that it is a created will in conscious variance with the uncreated will of God. God made us to His own image and to His own likeness; He gave us all that He could bestow upon us. He could not bestow upon us His own nature, because that is uncreated, and no creature can partake of the uncreated nature of God; but God could bestow, and He did by His omnipotence with His mercy, bestow upon us His likeness, His image, an intelligence and a will, a heart and a conscience, so that we become intelligent and moral beings. The malice of sin consists, then, in this: that an intelligent creature, having a power of will, deliberately and consciously opposes the will of its Maker. The malice of sin is essentially internal to the soul. The external action whereby the sinner perpetrates his sin adds, indeed, an accidental malice and an accidental increase of wickedness; but the essence, the life of the malice, consists in the act of the soul itself.

We see, then, that sin is the conscious variation of our moral being from the will of God. We abuse our whole nature: we abuse our intellect by acting irrationally, in violation of the will of God which is written upon the conscience; we abuse our will, because we deliberately abuse the power of the will, whereby we originate our actions in opposition to the will of God who gave it. We apply our intellect and will, with our eyes open and with freedom and choice, to the perpetration of acts, or the utterance of words, or the harboring of thoughts which are known to be contrary to the will of God; and, therefore, in every sin there is the knowledge of the intellect of what we are doing, the consent of the will in doing it, and the consciousness of the mind fixed upon the action despite these two objects: the law and the Lawgiver — the law of God known to us, and the Giver of that law, who is God Himself; so that we deliberately, with our eyes open and of our own free will, break God's law in God's face. Now, that is the plain definition and description of sin; and here I must, for a moment, turn aside from our path.

These last generations have become fruitful of impiety and of immorality of a stupendous kind; and among other of their impious and immoral offspring is a pestilent infidel school, who, with an audacity never before known in the Christian world, are at this time assailing the foundations of human society and of Divine Law. They have talked of late of what they call independent morality. And what do you suppose is independent morality? It means the law of morals separated from the Lawgiver. It is a proud philosophical claim to account for right and wrong without reference to God, who is the Giver of the Law. And what is the object of this theory? It is to get rid of Christianity, and of God, and of right and wrong altogether, and to resolve all morality into reason; and inasmuch as, it tells us, the dictates of human reason are variable all over the world, and change from generation to generation, this philosophy denies and destroys the foundations of morality itself.

Now, I should not turn aside to mention this monster of immorality and impiety, if it were not that at this time there is an effort being made in England to introduce under a veil this same subtle denial of morals, both Christian and natural. Only the other day I read these words, that "in the education of the people it is not possible, indeed, as things are, to teach morality without teaching doctrine; because the English people are so accustomed to associate morality and doctrine together, that they have not as yet learned any other foundation for morals." God forbid they ever should! The meaning of this is: Teach children right and wrong, but say nothing about God, nothing about the Lawgiver; teach them right and wrong if you will, but nothing about Jesus Christ. What is this but a stupidity as well as an impiety!

For morals are not the dead, blind, senseless relations that we have to sticks and stones, but the relations of duty and of obligation we have to the living Lawgiver, who is our Maker and Redeemer. There are no morals excepting in the relations between God and man, and between man and man. Morals mean the relations and duties of living and moral agents; and this independent morality, this morality without God for schoolchildren, is bottomless impiety if it be not the stupidity of unbelief. I could not help touching this in passing, and we will now go back to our subject once more.

II. I have now to draw two distinctions in the nature of sin. There are what are called formal sins, and what are called material sins. The importance of this distinction you will see hereafter.

1. Now, let us first understand what is a formal sin. It means a sin committed with a full knowledge of what we do, and a full consent to do it; so that in proportion as men have light, and know the law and the Lawgiver, in that proportion the sinfulness of their disobedience is increased. The holy angels were created by God in the full knowledge and light of His presence; and those who fell from their perfection by rebellion were formally guilty, in proportion to that angelic knowledge which left them without excuse.

All those who possess a clear light to know what is the law, and yet violate that law, are guilty, as Peter was guilty for denying his Master, and as Judas was guilty for selling Him; both were guilty in the proportion of their light. Those who, knowing the natural law, break that law, are guilty, because the law is written upon their conscience. Those who break the Christian law, knowing the Christian Faith, in the proportion of their light, are guiltier; and, above all men, those who have the full light of the Catholic Faith, if they break the laws of Jesus Christ, are the guiltiest on the face of the earth. You are guilty in the measure in which you have greater light; in the measure in which you have a fuller illumination, in that measure your guilt before God is greater.

Sins, then, are formal when committed with full light and consent. Now, what are material sins? The same actions done without sufficient knowledge, or without intention. Two men may commit the very same action, and the one be guilty before God, and the other not guilty. If, in the dark, I think that I am felling a tree, and with my axe I cut down a man, I am not a murderer. I have committed manslaughter in the dark, and without intention; and if the man I have slain be my own father, I am not a parricide; yet the act I have committed is materially an act of murder and of parricide. The quality of sinfulness, therefore, is purified, and taken away from the action, if I do not know what I am about, and if I do not intend it.

Our Divine Lord prayed for those who perpetrated the greatest sin that was ever committed on the face of the earth in these words: "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do." In His Divine compassion He prayed for His crucifiers; and the Apostle, speaking of Him, says: "Whom none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known him they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory." That is to say, among the multitude, perhaps the greater number did not know what they did, and that Divine prayer of compassion reveals a law of God's equity and pity upon the ignorant.

Nevertheless, those who know, or have it in their power to know, are guilty; for we are responsible not only for all that we do know, but for all that we could know, and therefore ought to know.

This is what you hear of as vincible or invincible ignorance. Ignorance takes away the guilt of our actions if that ignorance is invincible, for then we cannot overcome it. If we could not know any better, then God in His infinite mercy, though we have committed a material sin, will not take account with us as if it were a formal sin. But there is another kind of ignorance which is called vincible, because it may be overcome if we use the proper diligence to know; and God has put within our reach the means of knowledge sufficient if we will diligently seek it. Now let me apply these principles.

First. In the East there are churches which once were in communion with the Catholic Church, but have been for ages separated from it; and among those churches some have fallen from the Catholic Faith in respect to the doctrines of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation. Generation after generation, millions have been born into that state; they never knew the perfect truth; they never were in the unity of the One Church. They believe that God has revealed Himself in Christianity, and they believe the doctrines they have been taught from their childhood to be that revelation. They believe God has a church upon earth, and they believe the church in which they find themselves to be that Church of God; and the simple, the unlearned, and those who have not the means of knowing better — we have every reason before God to believe in their good faith — live and die, and God in His mercy — we may also hope — does not take account of them as if they had the formal light to know the perfect truth. But to come nearer home.

It is to me a consolation and joy — I say it again and again, and more strongly as I grow older — to know that in the last three hundred years multitudes of our own countrymen, who have been born out of the unity of the Faith, nevertheless believe in good faith with all their hearts that God has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, and that what they have been taught from their childhood is His revelation, and that He has founded upon earth a Church, and that the Church, which in their baptismal creed they call the Holy Catholic Church, is the church in which they themselves have been baptized, reared, and instructed. It is my consolation to believe that multitudes of such persons are in good faith, and that God in His mercy will make allowance for them, knowing what are the prejudices of childhood, of an education studiously erroneous, what is the power and influence of parents and of teachers, of public authority, and of public opinion, and of public law: how all these things create in their minds a conviction that they are in the right, that they believe the one Faith, and are in the one Church in which alone is salvation. We rejoice to commend them to the love of Our Heavenly Father, believing that though they may be materially in error, and in many things materially in opposition to His truth and to His will, yet they do not know, and, morally speaking, many cannot know it, and that therefore He will not require it at their hands.

2. This, then, is the first distinction of sin, into formal and material sin; yet I must draw one more, and that is between Original Sin and actual sin. What is Original Sin? It is the transgression of the law in the head of the human race, whereby all who are born are sinners before God, and born into a state of privation. The transgression of the law in our head is our sin because when God created man, He created mankind. In that man the whole race of mankind was contained. Mankind springs from one head, and that head was the heir to all the benedictions of the kingdom of God in our behalf: our inheritance was contained in him. If he had stood, from him we should have inherited the kingdom of God; he fell, and by his fall disinherited the race of mankind. We hear men of this day say: "What can be more absurd than to believe that the human race fell because Adam ate an apple?" I put the words with all the bald impertinence of the world.

Let us see now whether the ways of God need justification. God created Adam, and placed him in Paradise in the midst of a garden. He gave him a dominion over every tree of that garden, except one only. Such was the generosity of God. He did not say: "Thou mayest eat of the fruit of that one tree, but of ten thousand other fruit-bearing trees of the garden thou shalt not eat; and in whatsoever day thou eatest of them thou shalt die the death." God did not, with the parsimony of a human heart, give Adam permission to eat of one tree, and forbid him ten thousand. No. He gave him free permission to eat of ten thousand, and forbade him to eat of one alone. Was there anything unreasonable in this? Was it not what you would do if you had the will to try the obedience of anyone? Was it not what you would do, and what men do at this day, when out of liberality they lease their lands upon what is called a peppercorn rent? When the world speaks impertinently, I may answer the world in its own tongue. The landlord who leases out his estate, taking only a nominal acknowledgment, is commended by all men as generous, large-hearted, noble-minded. He acts as a friend, without self-interest, when he entrusts to another man the enjoyment and enrichment which arise from his estates upon the mere acknowledgment that, after all, they belong to him. He is only reserving his right.

Now what did Almighty God in that commandment do? He reserved His right as Sovereign — He reserved His right over the obedience of the man whom He had created. He thereby revealed that He had jurisdiction over that garden, and over the man to whom He had permitted its free enjoyment. He put him upon trial — it was the test of his fidelity. More than this: it was a test so slight, that I may say there was no temptation to break the law. If he had been forbidden to eat of all the trees of the garden, save one, he would have been tempted at every turn. Every tree he gazed upon would have been a fresh temptation; he would have been followed and haunted by temptation wherever he went. God did not deal so with him — He forbade him one, and one alone; so that he had perfect liberty to go to and fro, gathering from the whole garden except from that one tree. Where, then, was the temptation?

As on God's part there was Divine generosity, so on man's part there was the wantonness of transgression. It may, indeed, be my defect, but I can see nothing in this that is not consonant with Divine wisdom, Divine goodness, Divine sovereignty, and Divine mercy. I see nothing to warrant the impertinence of the world. Well, this law was slight, and without any temptation whatsoever Adam transgressed it. He held the enjoyment of his perfection, and of the promise of eternal life, and of the kingdom of God, upon the payment, as I said before, of that quit rent, of that mere acknowledgment of the sovereignty of his Maker, and even to this he would not admit.

What, then, was the consequence? Man, as God made him, had three perfections. First, he was perfect in body and soul. Secondly, he had the higher perfection of the Holy Spirit dwelling in his heart, whereby his soul was ordered and sanctified, and the passions were held in perfect subjection to the reason and the will. Thirdly, he had a perfection arising from that higher perfection, namely, immortality in the body and perfect integrity in the soul. So that he had these three perfections: a natural perfection in body and soul, a supernatural perfection by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and a preternatural perfection of immortality; and all these by one act of disobedience he lost. When he sinned, the Spirit of God departed from him, his soul died because it was separated from God, his immortality was forfeited, the integrity or harmony of the soul was lost likewise, the passions rebelled, the will was weakened, the intellect became confused, and the nature of man was deprived of its supernatural perfection and of all that follows from it. This is the meaning of the words, "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt die the death." It was spiritual and temporal death, followed, except on repentance, by eternal death hereafter.

We see, then, the meaning of Original Sin in us. It is that we, being born of that forefather, are born disinherited of these three perfections which we lost in him by his disobedience. We are born into this world without the Spirit of God; we receive Him in our Baptism, which is our second birth. By our first birth, "that which is born of the flesh is flesh." We have the three "wounds," as they are called, of Adam — ignorance in the intellect, weakness in the will, and turbulence in the passions. This is the state in which we are born into this world, and therefore we are spiritually dead before God. I see in this, as I said before, nothing but Divine wisdom, and wisdom is justified of her children. And here I wish to answer what may perhaps arise in the minds of some of you concerning infants that die before Baptism. Sometimes people say, "How can I believe that those infants who die before Baptism, through no fault of their own, should go to eternal torment?" God forbid. Infants that die with Original Sin only, never having committed an actual sin — who believes that they descend into a place of torment? Their eternal state is a state of happiness, though it be not in the vision of God: for we know of no way in which any human soul can see the vision of God except by regeneration of the Holy Ghost.

Without receiving the grace of Holy Baptism, the soul is not in the supernatural order; and of those who die in the natural order we are unable to affirm that the grace which belongs to the supernatural order is extended, and that, because for this we have no revelation. It is, however, certain that the privation attached to Original Sin carries with it nothing which the world, sometimes contradicting the Christian Faith for the purpose of maligning it, most unreasonably says against it. But though Original Sin is only punished by privation, every actual sin will be punished by actual pain. There is pain of sense which follows actual sin; every actual sin that men commit will be punished by pain, either temporal or eternal, for pain follows sin as the shadow follows the substance.

Lastly, we come to actual sin. What is it? Let us recall the principles with which I began. Actual sin is the conscious variance of a creature to the known will of its Creator; and that conscious variance includes the light of the intellect, and the consent of the will, and the knowledge and intention of what we are doing. The essential malice of sin is in the will: and there is a threefold malice in every actual sin committed by a Christian. First, there is a malice against God the Father, who made man to His image and likeness, that He might be the object of his love; that he might love Him, know Him, serve Him, worship Him, be conformed to Him, and dwell with Him in eternity. The Christian who sins against God sins against his Creator, and worships the creature more than the Creator; that is to say, worships the world, his pleasures, himself. Self-worship he puts in the place of the worship of God, and in that he does an infinite offence — infinite, though he be finite — because the Person against whom that offence is committed is an infinite God.

Secondly, there is a malice against our Lord Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the world. The Apostle says every sinner is "an enemy of the Cross of Christ." He says, "They that do such things, I have told you often, and now again tell you weeping, that they are enemies of the Cross of Christ." (Phil. 3:18). And why? Because Jesus Christ suffered on the Cross for those very sins which such men commit. The sinner nails Him on the Cross once more. The nails and the hammer were but the material instruments of crucifixion; the moral cause of the Crucifixion of the Son of God was the sin which you and I have committed; and if we commit such sins again, we deliberately renew the causes which nailed Him on the Cross. Again, the Apostle says, if those who despised the law of Moses were condemned, of how much severer punishment shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and put Him to open shame, and counted the Blood of the Testament, whereby he was sanctified, unclean; and hath done this in despite to the Spirit of Grace! (cf. Heb. 10:28-29).

The Christian who deliberately commits sin wounds our Divine Saviour. He opens those Five Sacred Wounds, making them bleed afresh. With a cold and ungrateful heart he renews the sorrows which caused the agony of Gethsemane, and made Our Lord sweat His Sweat of Blood.

Not only this; but thirdly, there is a malice against the Holy Ghost. Every sin that is committed, is committed against the light and grace of the Holy Spirit in the conscience; and in this there are three degrees. We may grieve the Holy Ghost, we may resist the Holy Ghost, and we may quench the Holy Ghost. Our Divine Lord has said, "Every sin and every blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, except the blasphemy of the Holy Ghost; and if any man shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall never be forgiven him in this world nor in the world to come." (Matt. 12:31-32). Now what is the meaning of this? A man may speak against Jesus Christ, ay, blaspheme his Lord; and the Holy Spirit, convincing him of sin, may bring him to repentance, may convert him to God, and his soul may be saved; but any man who commits mortal sin and refuses repentance, thereby blasphemes the Holy Ghost, who is the Spirit of Penance, the Spirit of Absolution, the Absolver of the penitent. Such a sinner rejects the whole dispensation of grace; and, therefore, the sin that shall never be forgiven is the sin of impenitence. Every sin that men repent of shall be forgiven; but the sin that is not repented of shall never be forgiven, neither in this world, nor in the world to come.

In giving these definitions, I am afraid that what I have said is somewhat abstract, perhaps somewhat tedious; but it is impossible for me to make clear what I have to say hereafter, without laying down first principles. I will now, therefore, only make application of what I have said. We have here two practical principles.

1. The first is this: no one is so blind to his own sins as the man who has the most sin upon him. If a man is plague-stricken, he can see it by the discoloration of the skin. If the scales of leprosy are coming up upon his arm, he can tell that he is a leper. If a cloud is growing over the pupil of the eyes, he can tell that he is losing the light of heaven. All the diseases of the body make themselves known emphatically; but it is the subtlety and danger and deadliness of sin that it conceals itself. No men know the light of God's presence so little as those who are covered with sin; and the more sin they have upon them the less they can see it. Though all the perfections of God, like the rays of the sun which encircle the head of the blind man, are round about them all the day long, they are unconscious of His presence. They are like Elymas, the magician, who, for his impiety, had scales upon his eyes; and because they do not see the light of God, therefore they do not see His perfections, and therefore they do not see themselves; for the light of the knowledge of self comes from the light of the knowledge of God. How shall a man know what unholiness is, if he does not know what holiness is? How shall he know what falsehood is, if he does not know what truth is; or impurity, if he does not know purity; or impiety, if he does not know the duty we owe to God, and the majesty of God, to whom worship is due? Just in the proportion in which the light of the perfections of God is clouded, we lose the light of the knowledge of ourselves; and the end of it is that when men hear such words as I am speaking now, they say, "That .is just the character of my neighbor — that is the very picture of my brother"; they do not see themselves in the glass. You may describe their character, and they will not recognize it; you may tell them, "This is yourself," and they will not believe it. There is something within them which darkens the conscience; and why is it? Because sin stupefies the intellect and the heart: it draws a veil and a mist over the brightness of the intelligence, and it darkens the light of the conscience. Sin is like hemlock: it deadens the sense, so that the spiritual eye begins to close, and the spiritual ear becomes heavy, and the heart grows drowsy. And when men have brought themselves to that state by their own free will, then comes the just judgment of God: "I will give them eyes that they may not see, ears that they may not hear, hearts that they may not understand, lest they should be converted, and I should heal them. These things said Isaias, when he saw his glory and spoke of him." (John 12:40-41).

2. There is one other truth — that no men see the nature of sin so clearly as those who are freest from sin; just as no intelligence knows sin with such an intensity of knowledge as God Himself. Our Divine Lord Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, knew sin in all its hatefulness so as no other human heart has ever known it. His Immaculate Mother — because sinless — knew the sinfulness of sin by the light of her intelligence, and by a pure horror of her whole spiritual nature. So in like manner the saints of God, each one of them in the proportion of his sanctity; and so you likewise, in the measure in which you are free from sin, in that measure will you hate it, in that measure you understand and estimate its sinfulness. And if at any time in your life you have committed sin, in the measure in which you are separated from your past life — in the measure in which that old character of yours has been taken off and you can see "the old man" which you have sloughed off, that old being and nature of yours which cleaves to you no longer, which you look on as a thing hideous and horrible, belonging to you no more, belonging to your childhood, boyhood, or youth, but yours no longer now — in that measure you understand the sinfulness of sin.

You can look back on your past life, and understand your sins as you did not understand them then; and when you come to die, your present character and your present life will be seen by you in a light, brighter and more intense than that under which you see them now. Look up, therefore, into the light of God's presence, and pray God to make you to know yourselves as He knows you, and to see yourselves as He sees you now; for when you have seen the worst of your sins, what are they, compared with those which God sees in you? Therefore, do not let us ever think that we know all our sins; do not let us imagine that we fully know our own sinfulness. We are only beginning to learn it, and we shall have to learn it all our life.

There are three great depths which no human line can sound — the depth of our sinfulness, the depth of our unworthiness, and the depth of our nothingness. If you are beginning to learn those three things, happy are you. Be not afraid, the more you see your own sinfulness; and for this reason. Who is showing it to you? It is the light of the Spirit of God. It is He who alone searches the heart, who alone makes us know ourselves; and the more you see of your own sinfulness, the truer pledge you have of His presence; that He is with you, that He is within you, that He is busied about your salvation. He is giving you a pledge and a promise that every sin you see He will help you to repent of, and every sin you repent of shall be washed away in the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ.

Therefore, one last word. My first counsel to you in this Lent is this: Try to know yourselves, try to learn during these days such knowledge of yourselves as you have never had before. Begin as if it were for the first time. Take the Ten Commandments: read them in the letter; understand them in the spirit; and try your life from your childhood, from your earliest memory, by that Divine rule. Take the seven deadly sins, try yourselves by them, in deed, in word, and in thought. Pray to the Spirit of God, whose work and office it is to convince the world of sin. Pray every day in this Lent, morning and night, that the Spirit of God may illuminate your reason to understand the nature of sin, and convince your conscience, that you may know what sins are upon you. Pray to Him that the light of the presence of God may come down upon you like the light of the noonday, that you may see not only the broad outlines of your sins, but your finer and more delicate and more subtle offences against God, even as we see the motes which float in the sunbeam at noonday.

The more you have the presence of God with you, the more the light of His perfections is upon you, the more you will see yourselves. The Patriarch Job, who, though he had long lived in prayer, in converse and in communion with God, and had been grievously afflicted (which more than any other discipline brings men to know themselves) — nevertheless, at the end of all his trials, when God spoke to him out of the light of His presence, said: "With the hearing of the ear I have heard thee, but now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore I condemn myself, and do penance in dust and ashes." (Job 42:5-6).

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