Away back in the infancy of the world I hear one of the earliest of the Patriarchs uttering a great and bitter cry. '_I have sinned!_' he cries; '_what shall I do?_' And, as I turn over the leaves of my Bible, I find that question echoed again and again, generation after generation and age after age. Yet never once does it receive the slightest hint or suggestion of an answer. And, depend upon it, if the Son of Man had never come into the world, it would have echoed round the globe--still unanswered and unanswerable--until this day. 'O Plato, Plato!' cried Socrates, 'it may be that the gods can forgive sin, but, alas, I do not see how!' Nor anybody else. Job's question fell back upon his face; the universe could give him no reply. It is very striking. And so, here at the beginning of my Bible, I hear the first man's question; and, here at the end of my Bible, I hear the last man's answer! '_What shall I do? What shall I do?_' '_I have sinned; what shall I do?_' '_The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin!_' III These two men--Job and John--present us, first with a _comparison_, and then with a _contrast_. It is interesting to examine side by side their views of the sin that represented so terrific a problem. Job thought of it as a _contaminating_ thing. He felt that his soul was soiled. 'What shall I do?' he cries, 'what shall I do? If I bathe myself in snow water and wash my hands never so clean, yet shalt Thou plunge me in the ditch and mine own clothes shall abhor me!' Every day of his life he thought he heard, morning and noon and night, the awful Voice of the Most High. 'Though thou wash thee with niter, and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before Me, saith the Lord God.' He felt as Macbeth felt when advised to cleanse the stain from his guilty hands. Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand! No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red! Job was like the old lama, in Rudyard Kipling's _Kim_, who, year after year, wandered through cities and rice-fields, over the hills and across the plains, always searching, but searching in vain, for the River, the River of the Arrow, the River that could cleanse from sin! John, on the other hand, thought of sin as a _condemning_ thing. The great word 'condemnation' occurs on almost every page of his writings. He feels that every man's sin carries its own conviction. It is like finger-print evidence; it speaks for itself; it needs no long procession of corroborating witnesses. There it is! It tells its own terrible tale, and there is no gainsaying it. IV And yet, looked at in another way, the thoughts of these two men stand in sharp and striking contrast, the one with the other. '_I have sinned_,' cried Job; '_what shall I do? What shall I do?_'