Under the name of sin, the
difficulties of knowing oneself and conquering oneself which impede
man's passage to perfection, become, for Hebraism, a positive, active
entity hostile to man, a mysterious power which I heard Dr. Pusey[450]
the other day, in one of his impressive sermons, compare to a hideous
hunchback seated on our shoulders, and which it is the main business of
our lives to hate and oppose. The discipline of the Old Testament may be
summed up as a discipline teaching us to abhor and flee from sin; the
discipline of the New Testament, as a discipline teaching us to die to
it. As Hellenism speaks of thinking clearly, seeing things in their
essence and beauty, as a grand and precious feat for man to achieve, so
Hebraism speaks of becoming conscious of sin, of awakening to a sense of
sin, as a feat of this kind. It is obvious to what wide divergence these
differing tendencies, actively followed, must lead. As one passes and
repasses from Hellenism to Hebraism, from Plato to St. Paul, one feels
inclined to rub one's eyes and ask oneself whether man is indeed a
gentle and simple being, showing the traces of a noble and divine
nature; or an unhappy chained captive, laboring with groanings that
cannot be uttered to free himself from the body of this death.
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