This is the aspect of sin as a state of the sinful soul, and as affecting the present relation between man and God. It has destroyed the union, has broken down even the sacrificial bridge, for it has made all acceptable offerings impossible. Man's will is weakened, therefore he has not strength to offer himself completely and unreservedly to God; his nature is corrupted and stained, therefore his offering, could he make it, could not be accepted. Sin is a hopeless state of weakness and uncleanness. But there is another, in one sense an earlier, more fundamental aspect of sin. The sins of the past have produced not merely weakness and corruption, but also guilt. The sinner feels himself guilty before God. If we examine the idea of guilt, as realized by the conscience, it will be seen to contain the belief in an external power, or law, or person against whom the offence has been committed, and also an internal feeling, the acknowledgment of ill-desert, a sense of being under sentence, and that justly. Whether the punishment which is felt to be the due reward of the offence has been borne or not, the conception of punishment, when the offence has been committed, cannot be avoided, and it brings with it a conviction of its justice. These two elements, the external and the internal element, seem to be necessary to the full conception of guilt. The common fallacy that a self-indulgent sinner is no one's enemy but his own would, were it true, involve the further inference that such a sinner would not feel himself guilty. But it is precisely because the consciousness of sin does not and cannot stop here that, over and above any injury to self, any weakness or even corruption produced by sin, we speak of its guilt. 'Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done that which is evil in Thy sight.' This belief in an external power, whose condemnation has been incurred by sin, may take various forms; for the power may be represented as impersonal or as personal, as law or as God. For our present purposes, however, the distinction is immaterial: the essential point is that it is something external to ourselves, not merely the echo of the sinner's own self-inflicted pain and injury. We cannot, however, limit it to this. For it is not merely an external power, it is also a just power that is presented to the sense of guilt. Before bare power, unrighteous or non-moral, an offender may be compelled to submit, but he will not feel guilt. The state of mind expressed by Mill's well-known defiance is his who has offended a superior power which he cannot believe to be just, and it is very far removed from the feeling of guiltiness[217]. The sense of guilt implies the righteousness as well as the power of that against which we have offended; it is a moral conviction. Guiltiness, then, regarded in one aspect is the sense of sin, in another it is the recognition of the law of righteousness, or, if we may now assume the religious point of view, it is the conviction of