SECTION LVI. JAMES ii. 10.-" He that offendeth in one point, is guilty of all." THIS declaration has been objected to; but the apostle's own illustration of it furnishes a satisfactory solution: "For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now, if thou commit no adultery, yet, if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law." The daily process of law concurs with this reasoning. The murderer is punished, although he be no thief; and the thief is punished, although he be no murderer. The law does not say, Whoever steals AND murders shall be punished; but whoever steals OR murders shall be punished. A man offending in either way, or in any way, violates the law, which does not wait to take cognizance of the offence until the offender has violated all its decrees; but it feels its majesty assailed by a single offence, and vindicates itself by punishing it; while the offender becomes ranked under the general name of a criminal or a malefactor. We read that Eteocles of old was desirous to except one act of injustice from punishment : 66 If e'er we break the ties of right, "Tis when a kingdom is the glorious prize; In other things be strictly just." But he found to his cost that the law of justice admitted of no such exception. To put the matter, however, in a more direct way: the law can go no further than death: but a man need not break all the laws of his country to bring himself under this penalty, yet, if he dies, he is in no better condition than if he had broken them all. Again: rebellion against the state does not consist in attacking it in every possible way; but one overt act convicts a man, and renders him liable to death, thereby putting him in no better state than if he had resisted it in a hundred. It was in the same spirit that the Athenian axiom was conceived, that an offence done to one citizen was considered as an offence done to all: as well as the Latin maxim,† that the person who does an injury to one citizen threatens the whole community. › Indeed the analogy pervades everything in nature. Deface one part of a building, you Cic. Off. iii. 21. Cockman. + See Theseon Thesaurus, p. 46. spoil the look of the whole; tear one leaf of a book, you render the whole valueless; make one rent in a garment, and you ruin it all. Cicero, indeed, raises the question,* " Are you aware, that, should you lose one of your Corinthian dishes, you may yet have the rest of your furniture complete; but that, if you lose one virtue, or, to speak more correctly, if you confess there is one you have not, you have no virtue at all?" Yet, while he confirms in a remarkable manner the truth of the apostolic assertion, we may correctly reason on the other part of the sentence, that, although the rest of the furniture be indeed complete when one dish is broken, still there is no one who would not feel a loss of the one piece as in fact spoiling the whole set. "Conquer your passion," said Scipio to Masinissa,t "and do not mar by one vice your many good qualities." Every man in truth has his besetting sin, and deserves no praise for not yielding to those to which he is not inclined. As you will not find every tree or production in the same field," says Cicero,‡ so it is not every vice that grows in the same life." 66 66 Cic. Tusc. Q. ii. 14. + Liv. 30. 14. SECTION LVII. 1 PET. v. 8.-"The devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour." Is it not a great impeachment of God's mercy and wisdom to suppose that He allows thus an evil spirit to roam about, for the purpose of seducing and ruining mankind? I will say in return, Where is the practical difference between a personal agent suffered thus to tempt us, and our own lusts and passions, or external temptations? Surely the real difficulty is not whether the tempter be a person or not, but that there should be such a thing as temptation. Now, no one will deny, I suppose, that there is such a thing as allurement to vice. If there should be such an arguer, I presume he will stand alone in his denial. At least, he has against him all history and all experience. "Divinely," says Cicero,* "does Plato call pleasure the bait of evils: for that men are caught by it, as fishes are by a hook." "Rapes and adulteries," says the same writer, "and all other iniquity, are excited by no other allurements but those of pleasure." Ovid calls riches the incentives to evils: and similar expressions abound in the pagan writers, and in all others. Well, then, how is it that the Almighty has allowed these provocations to evil, which fill the world's history with blood, misery, and death, corrupt its purity, and debase its dignity? This difficult inquiry resolves itself at last into the great problem of the origin of evil and this problem is not rendered in any way more difficult because the Scriptures give a personality to the tempter. It is only bringing the evils of temptation more clearly and boldly before us, and indeed is really dealing mercifully with us, by putting us more expressly and palpably on our guard against them. In short, Revelation is not to blame because there is temptation: if anywhere, the * De Senect. 13. So in his Hortensius, " Illecebræ atque escæ malorum." + De Sen. 12. |