(_a_) Profess _Atheism_. They deny His existence, His law, His providence. God has put in every conscience a witness to His being, to His law, to His providence, and to profess Atheism is not only to reject revelation, but to resist the inner testimony of the Conscience. It is incipient, encouraged, and becomes habitual, till the whole attitude of the inner nature is one of antagonism to God. (_b_) Who resist _God's moral law_. Men may be ready to admit that there is a God in Heaven, but as His law limits and controls their liberty, they strive against the restraints He imposes on them, and submit only to such laws as they are forced by the law of the land, or by social society to observe. They cast God out of their consciences. (_c_) Who resist _God's truth_. Men may accept the fact that God exists in Heaven, and that He has imposed on men a moral law, but they reject His revelation regarding the facts of the Faith, the articles of the Creed, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Resurrection, the Commission to the Church, the Sacraments. All wilful resistance to the faith as taught by the Church, the depository of Revelation, is thus a rebellion against God. (_d_) Who resist _God's Church_. The Church is the kingdom of God on earth, and all schism is a revolt against His authority as committed to His Church, and in as far as it is _conscious_ and deliberate, is rebellion against God, different only in degree to that of Satan and his apostate angels in Heaven. Where this is in ignorance, it is of course otherwise. God will always consider the imperfection of man's knowledge, and if a man resists His truth, His moral law, His Church, through invincible ignorance, He will excuse such rebellion. [Illustration] Third Wednesday in Lent. _THE NATURE OF SIN._ (CONTINUED.) 1. We have considered the first and most terrible Sin, that of the Revolt of the creature against the Creator. We might indeed consider all transgression as a rebellion of the will against the Divine Will, but it is not always so. It is not a rebellion of the will altogether, and consciously against God as Ruler, but it is a transgression of a single command, either through stress of temptation or through carelessness. It may, however, be deliberate and wilful, a transgression of one law, but without the intention of stepping into absolute and acknowledged hostility to God. 2. We sin against God's commandment, either-- (_a_) By _thought_, when we voluntarily and with deliberation consider, and take pleasure in considering, those things which we know to be forbidden by God. The thought of evil is not necessarily sinful, nor is the emotion of pleasure that follows on the thought, _unless harboured_. We cannot avoid the knowledge of evil, nor can we help the sense of pleasure which is due to the corruption of our nature through original sin, but when the _will consents_ to the thought of evil, takes it up and gives it a lodgment in the heart, then it becomes Sin.