p. 43 | Sin | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 23, 1872

Sin.

How short the word. Only three little letters; and yet in that one brief syllable are compressed all the woes of earth, all the agonies of perdition. Sin—all the crimes and follies, the wrongs and miseries of six thousand years of human history epitomized. Sin—three tiny clicking types express it. But how gigantic, how fearful a monster. Sin—black with countless millions of horrors, and red with oceans of gore. On all God's beautiful earth there is not a spot unpolluted by its hideous footprints. On land or sea, from pole to pole, there's not a breeze whose wings are not laden with its poisonous breath. Sin—where has it not entered? It crept into Heaven in ambitious guise. Its baleful whispers were heard amid the fragrant bowers of Paradise. It bathed the hands of earth's first-born son in fratricidal blood. It rolled the destroying billows of the deluge, over a world steeped in its wickedness. It reared and razed the proud battlements of Babylon and Nineveh. It has poured out enough human blood to fill the ocean's mighty reservoirs, and float all the navies of creation. It has wrung from anguished eyes tears enough to feed all the rivers and lakes on our planet. It has extorted every groan and sigh that ever pierced the pitying ear of Omniscience. It has inspired all the Neros, Herods, Caligulas, Napoleons, and Quantrells. It has swept with carnage, crimsoned, desolating tread beneath the banners of Caesar and Tamerlane. It has brought down fire from Heaven upon Sodom and Gomorrah, Jerusalem and Chicago. Beneath the aged olives of Gethsemane, it crushed the gentle spirit of the Son of God.