THE SINNER BECOMES THE

TEMPTER

"She gave unto her husband with her, and he did eat."-Genesis 3: 6.

S

OMEWHERE out in the Atlantic Ocean there is a steamer whose crew is eagerly feeling on the far-off ocean bed, trying to hook up the broken end of a deep-sea cable. Already the steamer has had to come back to port for more coal and supplies and additional lengths of cable. One end of the broken cable has been picked up and fastened to a buoy, but the other end has thus far eluded the vigilant rescuers. A dozen times the grapple has caught hold of it, and every time, before it could be brought on board and secured, the cable has parted again, being broken by the high waves. This has happened so often, and the breaks have been so extensive, that at the last report there was no less than forty-six miles between the broken ends of that cable. The break was a matter of a minute, repairing

it is a matter of some months already, and no one knows how many more.

Eve's sin was like that broken cable. It was the work of a moment, but it broke the cable connection between her heart and God, and caused her to be to Adam not what God had purposed her to be, a helpmeet that should lead him upward, but a tempter that should lead him downward.

I

The first great message of our theme, which I wish to impress on our thoughts, is the fact of our influence upon others. Whether we will or not, we are constantly affecting other lives than our own. No man can say, "I am my own, and I will live my own life and have no effect or influence on anybody else." That is absolutely impossible. The late Dr. Reuen Thomas declared that an individual life would have to start as the Scriptures say of the life of Melchizedek, without father and without mother. We all of us are related. Whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, the fact remains.

We need not concern ourselves, however, about remote ancestries. Those immediately back of us we can not help but know have influenced us more or less. We see family likenesses extending not alone to facial expression, but family likenesses extending to character. If you find a proud and obstinate mother, you are pretty sure, if there are children in the family, to find also a proud and obstinate son; if you find a weak and indolent father, you will not be surprised if somewhere in the family you find a still weaker and more indolent daughter. Our relationships count for something. They are not mere matters of convenience. Soul, as well as body, descends. And yet every man has something which individualizes him. There is a spark, as it were, of spiritual life in every one of us, as there is a spark of electricity in every drop of water and in every grain of sand. Electricity in matter is often used to represent spirituality in mind. So each of us is confronted with these two facts-the fact of relationship to others, making our life a continuation of their life, and the fact of each of us having a distinct personality. Now, this relation

to others, from which we can not free ourselves, shows that the good in us and the evil in us are not entirely our own, and that no man can be judged simply as an individual. It is not our own until we adopt it as our own. Related all around as we are, we can see that Paul announces a universal law of life when he says, "For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself." Every man is related all around. Is it not clear that no good man lives to himself? The very idea of goodness implies unselfishness, kindness, sympathy. When a man with whole-hearted sincerity cooperates with God, or, as Paul says, "lives unto the Lord," then we see that he is not living to himself. And yet if we look into the matter sufficiently close we shall find that there is a sense in which a man is never so much living to himself or for his own interests as when he is voluntarily living to God. The laws of the universe are such that benevolence ultimately hangs up by the neck the man whose selfishness has blinded his eyes to the fact that he has been occupying himself all his life, like Haman of old, building a gallows

for his own disaster, for living to himself is forever an impossible task. In some degree or other every man is multiplying himself; his character does not remain at home, but it travels abroad.

These are solemn facts. Dr. Chalmers, the great Scotch preacher, once said that every man is a missionary now and forever, for good or for evil, whether he intends it or designs it or not. He may be a blot radiating his dark influence to the very circumference of society; or he may be a blessing, spreading benediction over the length and breadth of the world; but a blank he can not be. There are no moral blanks. There are no neutral characters. We are either the sower that sows, or the light that splendidly illuminates, or the salt that silently operates; dead or alive, every man speaks.

II

This study of influence must certainly make sin look more terrible to us than when we think of it only as a personal matter, for no man can tell how far his sin may