“Sin” is an ugly word, a word that stands for the ugliest, most terrible fact in the universe of God. The world was fair and bright till sin entered it; all its wretchedness is the result of sin. Man was pure and happy till sin entered; his foulness and broken-heartedness are the result of sin. The Bible looks at this terrible fact of sin, and fails to find a single word large enough to describe it in all its many aspects of horror. It employs various words for this one terrible thing according as it views it from different standpoints. Looking at it from the standpoint of the true end of human life, sin is a “missing of the mark.” The chief end of man is to glorify God. The sinner fails in that. He misses the mark. Sin from this point of view means _failure_, _defeat_, _disaster_. The Bible looks at sin from the standpoint of Law, the Divine Law written in the nature and on the conscience of man, and brands sin as _lawlessness_. Every single sin is a _trespass_, a transgression, and overstepping of the bounds. The Bible looks at sin from the standpoint of prudence, and stigmatises sin as _folly_—the most stupendous and senseless of all follies. The sinner is a man who, for a few moments of delirious excitement, barters away his immortal soul. The Bible looks at sin from the standpoint of God, and sin then becomes disobedience, or, as in the text quoted from Matthew, it becomes “_debt_.” Perhaps we are too apt to think of sin only in its effect upon ourselves. We think of the blight it brings upon human character and the ruin it makes in human lives. It is terrible to us because it always brings a curse with it. We fear and dread sin, not always because of its own intrinsic horror, but because of the penalties it inevitably entails; so that all too often our very fear of sin has its roots in selfishness, and springs out of self-love. I want to say to you that we shall never see sin in its naked horror, we shall never see it in its awful hatefulness, until we look at it from another standpoint. We sin not against ourselves alone, but _against_ God. David, in the great crime of his life, had sinned against Uriah, whose blood he had caused to be shed, and against Bathsheba, the partner of his sin, and against his own soul; but when under the faithful speech of Nathan he was brought to see that awful sin of his in its true light, he lost sight of himself, and Bathsheba and Uriah; he could only think of the God he had flouted and outraged and grieved, and this was the agonised cry that broke from his lips, “Against _Thee_, Thee only have I sinned and done this evil in _Thy_ sight.” Then comes in the enormity of sin. It is sin _against God_! Let me illustrate what I mean from our ordinary human life. Say that a son who has been loved at home and has been the pride of his mother’s heart, falls into disgrace and is brought up in the police courts charged with some shameful deed. If such a son has any