VI. THE SINNER'S EXCUSES ANSWERED us to a difficulty in the heart. They hated him so badly they could not speak pleasantly. Nor does the sacred historian assume that they could not at once subdue this hatred and treat
Joseph as brother should treat brother. The sacred writers are the last men in the world to apologize for sin on this wise.
There is the case of the angels sent to hasten Lot out of guilty Sodom. One said, "Haste thee escape thither, for I can not do anything until thou be come thither." Does this mean that the Almighty God had no power to overwhelm Sodom so long as Lot was in it? Certainly not. It meant only that it was His purpose not to destroy the city till Lot was out. Indeed, all men use language thus in common life. You go into one of our village stores and say to the merchant, Can you lift a ton of your goods at once? No. Can you sell me that piece of cloth for a shilling a yard? No. Does this it can mean the same as the other? By no means.
But how is it that you detect the difference? How is it that you come to know so readily which is the physical cannot and which the moral? The nature of the subject tells you.
But, you say, the same word ought always to mean the same thing. Well, if it ought to, it does not, in any language ever yet spoken by man. And yet there is no difficulty in understanding even the most imperfect of human languages if men are honest in speaking and honest in hearing, and will use their common sense. They intuitively construe language according to the nature of the subject spoken of The Bible always assumes that sinners can not do right and please God with a wicked heart. It always takes the ground that God abhors hypocrisy—that He can not be satisfied with mere forms and professions of service when the heart is not in it, and hence that all acceptable service must begin with making a new and sincere heart.
But here is another difficulty. Can I make to myself a new heart?
Yes, and you could not doubt but that you could, if you only understood what the language means. and what the thing is.
See Adam and Eve in the garden. What was their heart? Did God create it? No; it is not possible that He should, for a heart in this sense is not the subject of physical creation. When
God made Adam, giving him all the capacities for acting morally, he had no heart good or bad until he came to act morally. When did he first have a moral heart? When he first waked to moral consciousness and gave his heart to God. When first he saw God manifested, and put confidence in Him as his Father, and yielded up his heart to Him in love and obedience.
Observe, he first had this holy heart because he yielded up his will to God in entire consecration. This was his first holy heart.
But at length the hour of temptation came, alluring him to withdraw his heart from God and turn to pleasing himself. To Eve the tempter said "Hath God indeed said—Ye shall not surely die? "Ah, is that so? Then he raised the question either as to the fact that God had really threatened death for sin, or as to the justice of doing so. In either case it raised a question about obedience and opened the heart to temptation. Then that fruit came before