Page:God Manifest.djvu/470

 Scriptures declare that "the heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked." The reason is, that man inherits the accumulated evil of his parents and ancestors. A sin committed makes its impression on the mental constitution; that constitution is transmitted to children; and the same again, with those childrens' additional corruptions, to their children, and so on. Thus we find ourselves, in childhood and youth, full of evil tendencies; which evil tendencies, if indulged and allowed to come forth into actions, then become with us actual evils or sins. Now, to prevent this result—to prevent our giving way to our evil tendencies, and so making them our own and thus condemnable, the Divine commandments are given, and chiefly in the negative form. Thus, when the young man finds himself inclined to the sin of impurity and licentiousness, he remembers the command, "Thou shalt not commit adultery;" and again the Lord's words, "he that looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." Remembering this Divine command, he turns away his eyes, he resists the evil inclination, and does not suffer it to come forth into act, or to remain in his thought. What is the consequence? When he has thus striven against the sin, by strength given him from above,—then, at once, the Spirit of the Lord, which is ever pressing for admittance, enters, and removes from his heart the evil inclination itself, and so purifies the very springs of action. This effect will not, indeed, be fully produced at once, nor the second, nor the third time,—for regeneration is a gradual work: but on every occasion of temptation and