Conventional Notions of Sin

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Luke 11:37-39

And as he spoke, a certain Pharisee sought him to dine with him: and he went in, and sat down to meat.…

If you ask the Pharisee of old what sin was — "Well," he said, "it is eating without washing your hands; it is drinking wine without baying first of all strained out the gnats, for those insects are unclean, and if you should swallow any of them they will render you defiled." His repentance dealt with his having touched a Gentile, or having come on the windside of a Publican. Many in these days have the same notion, with a variation. We have read of a Spanish bandit, who, when he confessed before his father-confessor, complained that one sin hung with peculiar weight upon his soul that was of peculiar atrocity. He had stabbed a man on a Friday, and a few drops of the blood of the wound had fallen on his lips, by which he had broken the precepts of holy church, in having tasted animal food on a fast day. The murder did not seem to arouse in his conscience any feeling of remorse at all — not one atom — he would have done the same to-morrow; but an accidental violation of the canons of mother church excited all his fears.

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