p. 84 | GROWTH OF SIN by A. F. Schauffler

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 10, 1887

GROWTH OF SIN.

By A. F. Schauffler

SIN left alone, always goes from bad to worse. Each sin makes the next easier, and each generation tends to become worse than the one which preceded it. Were it not for the counteracting grace of God, there is no telling how vile this world would now be. In the centuries between Adam and Noah this tendency made itself felt, until the whole inhabited world was full of violence. At last things came to such a pass that God, in his justice, determined to interfere. But before he struck, he warned. For a hundred and twenty years Noah was a preacher of righteousness to that generation. But he preached in vain; and his warnings were as ineffectual as those of Lot in Sodom centuries later. At last the end came. God carried out his threats, and the flood carried every living man away. God has as good a right to carry men off by flood as by disease, and to take them all at once, or one by one, as it pleases him. But he tempered his judgment with mercy, in that he gave men a hundred and twenty years of warning.

Some people in our days demur to the justice and sovereignty of God, and want him rather to dance attendance on the whims of sinful man. It would please them to have the universe governed by the votes of men, rather than by the fiat of the Almighty. But the kingdom of God is an absolute monarchy, and not a republic. Had it been a republic, it would have gone to pieces long ago. God fulfills his pleasure in the armies of Heaven, and among the children of men; and it behooves sinners to obey, rather than criticize. Yet if, to any, God’s actions seem stern, we have only to point to Calvary to see that he who “so loved the world” has a tender heart as well as a strong hand. Calvary forever disproves any affirmation that God is an unjust or unfeeling God. He who gave his Son for men would never inflict any punishment on them from which it was possible to save them. The antediluvian world was past saving, and it was only when it reached that point that the judgment fell. Ten godly men would have saved Sodom, but there were not two such to be found in all these cities of the plains.—A. F. Schauffler.