Paul’s Plainness in Warning Sin
By Guthrie
WITH what plainness of speech did Paul warn, with what truth and tenderness did he plead! He looks on sinners as a trembling mother on her rash boy, when, hanging half-way over some beetling cliff, he stretches down his hand to pluck from the rock its wild and withering flowers. “As my beloved sons,” Paul cries, “I warn you.” He exhorts Timothy to rebuke “in and out of season.” He eschews those general denunciations of sin that are as little felt as general confessions of it are; that, like little things with broad, blunt points, neither pierce the skin nor penetrate the sore. The apostle enters into particulars. One by one, name by name, sin by sin, he writes out on several occasions the long, black catalogue of prevailing vices. And in these, as if, like the poisoned garment that stuck to Hercules, it could not be plucked from the body of humanity, this vice of drunkenness, the sin, the shame, the weakness of our nation. The world knows that. Other nations taunt us with that. Nor do scenes at home allow me to forget the strange, but stinging remark of a foreigner, who said: “It is a blessed thing for the world that you English are a drunken race. Such are your powers, and energy, and talent, that otherwise you would have become masters of the world.”—Guthrie.