The poison fang of sin!'
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We must go down into the depths of the fall
to know what our hearts are, and what they are
capable of—we must have the keen knife of God
to cut deep gashes in our conscience and lay
bare the evil that lies so deeply imbedded in
our carnal mind—before we can enter into and
experience the beauty and blessedness of
salvation by grace.
"From the sole of the foot even unto the head
there is no soundness in it—but wounds, and
bruises, and putrefying sores—they have not
been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified
with ointment." Isaiah 1:6
When the Church of God fell in Adam, she fell with
a crash which broke every bone and bruised her
flesh with wounds which are ulcerated from head to toe.
Her understanding, her conscience, and her
affections were all fearfully maimed . . .
her understanding was blinded;
her conscience stupefied;
her affections alienated.
Every mental faculty thus became perverted and distorted.
When Adam fell into sin and temptation—sin rushed
into every faculty of body and soul—and penetrated
into the inmost recesses of his being.
As when a man is bitten by a poisonous serpent,
the venom courses through every artery and vein,
and he dies a corrupted mass from head to foot;
so did the poison fang of sin penetrate into
Adam's inmost soul and body, and infect him
with its venom from the sole to the crown.
But it is only as sin's desperate and malignant
character is opened up by the Holy Spirit that it
is really seen, felt, grieved under, and mourned
over as indeed a most dreadful and fearful reality.
"The whole head is sick—and the whole heart faint."
Every thought, word, and action is polluted by sin.
Every mental faculty is depraved . . .
the will chooses evil;
the affections cleave to earthly things;
the memory, like a broken sieve,
retains the bad and lets fall the good;
the judgment, like a bribed or drunken judge,
pronounces heedless or wrong decisions;
the conscience, like an opium eater, lies
asleep and drugged in stupefied silence.
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