depends upon what we think about this primary fact of man's
condition, that he is a sinful man. The root of all heresy lies
there. Every error that has led away men from Jesus Christ and His
Cross may be traced up to defective notions of sin and a defective
realisation of it. If I do not feel as the Bible would have me feel,
that I am a sinful man, I shall think differently of Jesus Christ and
of my need of Him, and of what He is to me. Christianity may be to me
a system of beautiful ethics, a guide for life, a revelation of much
precious truth, but it will not be the redemptive power without which
I am lost. And Jesus Christ will be shorn of His brightest beams,
unless I see Him as the Redeemer of my soul from sin, which else
would destroy and is destroying it. Is Christianity merely a better
morality? Is it merely a higher revelation of the divine Nature? Or
does it _do_ something as well as _say_ something, and what does it
do? Is Jesus Christ only a Teacher, a Wise Man, an Example, a
Prophet, or is He the Sacrifice for the sins of the world? Oh,
brethren, we must begin where this text begins; and our whole
conception of Him and of His work for us must be based upon this
fact, that we are sinful and lost, and that Jesus Christ, by His
sweet and infinite love and all-powerful sacrifice, is our soul's
Redeemer and our only Hope. The world has to be convicted and
convinced of sin as the first step to its becoming a Church.

The next step of this divine Spirit's conviction is that which
corresponds to the consciousness of sin, the dawning upon the
darkened soul of the blessed sunrise of righteousness. The triple
subjects of conviction must necessarily belong to the world of which
our Lord is speaking. It must be the world that is convinced, and it
must be the world's sin and the world's righteousness and the world's
judgment of which my text speaks. How, then, can there follow on the