There is still another aspect to sin which must be considered before we can fully appreciate the way of salvation which the Gospel reveals. Sin not only spoils the sinner’s life and drags him into slavery. It separates him from God. It opens a chasm between him and his heavenly Father, or to vary the figure it casts a shadow on God’s face. God seems far away and stern. The sense of warmth and tenderness vanishes. The sinner can see God only through the veil of his sins. This is a universal experience. The same thing happens in our relations with men. As soon as we have injured a person, treated him unfairly, played him false, a chasm opens between our life and his. We transfer our changed attitude to him. We dislike to meet him. We have no comfort in his presence. We interpret all his actions through the shadow which our deed has created. Our sense of wrong-doing makes us afraid of the person wronged. The conduct of little children offers a good illustration of this subjective effect of sin, because in them one catches the attitude at its primitive stage before reflection colors it. Some little child has disobeyed his father and discovers, perhaps for the first time, that he has “something inside which he cannot do what he wants to with,” as a little boy said. When he begins to think of meeting his father he grows uncomfortable. It is not punishment he is afraid of, he has no anticipation of that. He is conscious of wrong doing and it has made a chasm between himself and his father. He reads his father’s attitude now in the shadow of his deed. He has no joy or confidence in meeting him. Something strange has come between them.