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There are various definitions of sins, each one of which is true according to our standpoint. If we regard sin as a violation of man's true destiny, which destiny we read not only in God's loving command, but also in the very law of man's own being, then sin is the transgressing of the law. If we regard sin as variation from the right, the good, the true, then sin is unrighteousness. If we regard sin as the negation of man's true nature as a spiritual being, and the identifying of him with the things of sense, then sin is materialism. If we regard sin as the fixing of the affections — affections that were intended for glories beyond the stars — upon the perishing thing of this world, then sin is worldliness. And, finally, if we regard sin as the failure or refusal of the soul to apprehend and confide in the unseen, then sin is unbelief. But it is always the one and self-same thing, the same grim and ghastly thing—in the godless man of the world, and the ruffian who outrages law, and the smooth libertine and vulgar thief; in the respectable atheist who says there is no God, and the brave outlaw who lives his creed and acts upon his belief. For, while sins differ, sin — the evil root out of which all sins proceed — is the same. Sins are but symptoms; the disease called sin lies deeper in the soul. And oh! it is an awful thought, well calculated to humble us all into the very dust, that no matter what our sins may be — no matter how decent, how respectable, how secret — they each and all proceed out of the same fell disorder as the sins of the veriest wretch who outrages man's laws and exhausts man's patience by his wickedness! And now that sin has been traced to its last analysis, let us consider its results on the soul. It was Wisdom that of old spoke the words of my text, and her voice is still uplifted among the sons of men, "He that sinneth against Me wrongeth his own soul." It is true that he wrongs the souls of others also. But it is not of this that I now speak. The worst wrong, the deepest indignity, is done to the soul that commits the sin.

1. He wrongs his soul by the degradation he inflicts upon it, the evil that he scatters through it. The soul comes as a new creation from God. It is enshrined in a body that inherits evil — evil propensities, insurgent affections; and it has a hard struggle at best, and cannot win the victory but by the help of God. But the man who sins makes a voluntary surrender of the nobler to the baser part, and so appropriates the frailty of the baser nature, and makes it a part of his soul's being. Each sin by a certain reflex action spreads disorder through man's whole nature. In this way the very bodily appetite may become the appetite also of the soul. Oh, grim and ghastly are the evils which sin inflicts upon the body! It dulls the eye, and palsies the hand, and banishes manly grace from the brow, and coarsens and brutalises the human face Divine. But something far more dreadful than this befalls the sinner. The soul takes on the vice of the body. The worst symptom of drunkenness, for instance, is not the craving of the body, but the craving of the soul. The soul of the inebriate begins to crave the false excitement of drink, and an obliquity corresponding to that of the body begins to set up in the soul. The eye of the drunkard sees false or sees double: the mind's eye begins to see false also. And so it comes to pass that the soul of the drunkard becomes untruthful. This is the reason that men cannot trust the word of a drunkard. So also the deadly sin of impurity. The very mind and conscience become defiled. The mind panders to the body. Oh, horrible degradation! And so we find that there is a correspondence and correlation between different kinds of sin. The sensual man is always a cruel man. The drunkard is a liar. The thief is simply covetous and selfish, just like the worldling and the miser. In all these things man's whole nature is shamed and dishonoured. In all his being he is degraded and coarsened by his sin.

2. And this becomes all the more evident when we examine the wrong which sin does to man's characteristic powers. And first, his intellectual faculties, his reason, his power to know. It is a great and awful truth, little heeded, little understood, that all the powers of man's intellect are blunted and weakened by sin. Who has not seen the splendour of some lordly intellect first dimmed, then obscured, by excess or folly, until its fitful light would blaze at intervals, and then go out in piteous darkness, or fade into still more pitiable imbecility? But even more pitiable, if possible, is it to see the royal intellect of man forced into the base service of the world, and compelled to drudge like a very slave in the interest of sordid vice, or avarice, or other selfishness. Who does not know how such intellect declines into trickery or beastly cunning, and it watches like a fox for a chance to deceive, or like a predatory beast to seize its prey? To such a man high thoughts and noble purposes become simply impossible. Not less disastrous and dishonouring is the influence of sin on man's moral nature — on his power to discriminate and choose between right and wrong. Of the debilitating effect of sin upon the will of man I need not speak at length. All observation and all experience prove that this is its immediate, unvarying, inevitable effect. He who once yields to do wrong will find it harder the next time to do right, until he speedily becomes powerless to choose God and resist evil. But of the darkening, paralysing effect of sin upon a moral sense not so much is commonly thought, though such effect is not less immediate and inevitable. The moral sense, which at first is quick to discriminate, begins, under the pressure of sin, to lose the keenness of perception. The high sense of honour and of truthfulness is dulled. The good seems to be less good, and the evil does not seem to be so very evil, until at last that soul calls evil good and good evil. Woe to the soul that is in such a case! He has abdicated his throne, and lost his regal state, and broken his sceptre, and flung away his crown. Finally, even more debasing is the effect of sin upon the affections. This would seem to be the worst degradation of all — that man should not only sin his intellect and will and conscience away, but that he should love his shame, that his soul should be enamoured of its degradation. And yet, who does not know that even this is the effect of sin? Through it men learn to love the base things of this world and lose the power to love the nobler things. What is life to such a soul but shame? What shall death be but the beginning of an eternal bereavement? One word in conclusion. All the effects of sin may be summed up in one dreadful word — death. The dying of the soul, the decay of its faculties, the languishing of its strength — the progressive unending dying of an immortal soul, with all its unending anguish of unsatisfied tonging, unfulfilled desire, baffled hope, pitiless remorse, remediless desire — this is the dread reality at which men ought to tremble. It is no chimera of imagination; it is no spectre of the future — it is a present reality. It is doing its ghastly work even now in every soul where sin reigns. For the soul that sins is dying. The wages of sin is death.

(Bp. S. S. Harris.)

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KJV: But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death.

WEB: But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul. All those who hate me love death."