THE STAFF AND THE SACRIFICE. 141 



it had been brought home with enlightening efficacy 

 and convincing power to the heart and conscience, its 

 effect was often only to stimulate dormant evil longings 

 and latent corrupt affections into virulent action. Its 

 prohibitions and restraints, so far from killing sinful 

 desire, had a tendency to increase it ; sin took " occa- 

 sion by the commandment," and that which " was or- 

 dained to life," proved "to be unto death." 



St. Paul records his own experience of its futility : 

 " I had not known sin," he says, " but by the law. 

 For I was alive without the law once; but when the 

 commandment came, sin revived, and I died." Its 

 rewards were abstractions which, however beautiful and 

 alluring in description and prospect, were nevertheless 

 powerless to counteract the present temptations that 

 came to human beings in warm, living, breathing shapes 

 of flesh and blood. The law may induce a man actu- 

 ally to refuse the offers and allurements of evil, but it 

 cannot grapple with the sin of the heart, and order 

 aright the government of that invisible kingdom within 

 where Satan wages his most successful war. Its terrors 

 and its blessings have no effect in that inner world 

 where we have to do, not with the realities, but with 

 the ideal forms of sin where there are none of the 

 restraints and mitigations that hinder the full power of 

 evil in the world without ; where ambition is uniformly 

 successful, and pleasure leaves no stains or stings be- 

 hind ; and vice, instead of being clothed in rags and fed 

 on the beggar's dole, is clothed in purple and fares 

 sumptuously every day. " If," says the Apostle, " there 



