6. We have seen now how that the will is urged to consent to evil, either through the intelligence advising it, or the imagination alluring to it, or through ignorance, blinding to its nature, or through bad habit, which has weakened the power of resistance in the will. Now Sin only begins when the will has given consent. S. James says, "Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then, when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." (S. James i. 14, 15.) First the _suggestion_ of Sin comes from the Intelligence, or from the imagination. Then the _will consents_ to the suggestion. Sin is then in conception. Then it is carried forth into _execution_. Sin is accomplished. It has become a fatal fact. Lastly comes the judgment on sin, the result that follows sin as a shadow follows a body--Death. "The wages of sin are death." "By sin came death." We must therefore keep a watchful guard over the thoughts and imaginations, and let the will be under the absolute control of the Conscience, so that it may not give consent to the evil suggestion. If it has given consent, sin has begun to live; it may, however, again be checked before it proceeds to act. [Illustration] Third Monday in Lent. _ON ORIGINAL SIN._ 1. The subject for meditation to-day shall be the nature and effects of Original Sin, which is that Sin committed by our first parents, and of which we inherit, _not the guilt of the act of Sin_, but the _consequences of the act_. God is just, and God would not condemn to everlasting death men because their first parents had broken His commandment. But the consequences of Adam's sin passed on all his descendants. By his disobedience he had disturbed the Divine Order, lost his original innocence, introduced a dislocation into his nature. We will now consider what the results of that transgression were. (_a_) It disturbed the direct relation of the soul to God. It obscured its vision of God, and all certainty as to God's Nature and Will. This we see from the history of mankind. We find that the vision of God by the soul was so clouded that men fell into ignorance of God, and into false conceptions relative to the Nature of God and the Will of God. All the wanderings of the human mind in idolatries and mythologies are the result of the loss of clear perception of God's Nature. Not only so, but the mistakes men made relative to the law of God, so that they did many things that were evil, believing them to be good, was the result of the obscuration of the spiritual vision so that it could not see what was the Will of God. Again, all the errors and uncertainties into which men fell relative to the future state was due to the clouding of the spiritual eye, so that it could no longer see what was the Purpose of God relative to man.