The innocence of early days.
I. THERE IS AN INNOCENCE OF EARLY DAYS.
1. In the race. The Bible represents Adam and Eve as commencing life in primitive innocence. However we may interpret the narrative in Genesis-as literal history or as allegory—if we attach any inspired authority to it we must see that it points back to a time when man lived in childlike innocence and ignorance of evil.
2. In the nation. Even Tyre, wicked, corrupt Tyre, had once known better days. Nearly every people has traditions of a good age preceding the later corruptions. We do not see that the heathen are advancing. On the other hand, behind idolatry there are often to be discovered shreds of an ancient faith in one spiritual God. Thus the Vedas show a purer religion and a higher thought than are to be found in modern Hinduism. We may believe that God is educating the world, and yet see that vast portions of it do not as yet respond to the uplifting influences.
3. In the individual. Children begin life in innocency. Though they come into the world with hereditary tendencies to evil, those tendencies are at first latent, and until they have received the consent of the will they cannot be accounted elements of guilt. Concerning little children our Lord said, "Of such is the kingdom of God" (Mark 10:14).
II. THIS PRIMITIVE INNOCENCE AGGRAVATES THE GUILT OF LATER YEARS.
1. In the community. Man was not created corrupt. He cannot lay the charge of his sin against his Maker. There has been a fall. Degeneracy is especially evil. To go from good to bad and from bad to worse in a descending scale of wickedness is to be without excuse in sin.
2. In the individual. The child who has never known goodness can scarcely be blamed for living a bad life. He can hardly be said to have chosen evil rather than good, for he has had no alternative set before him. But it is otherwise with one who has begun well. Israel is the more to blame because her goodness was like the morning cloud (Hosea 6:4). The child of a Christian home is exceptionally wicked when he turns his back on the good influences of his early days, and deliberately descends into the lower paths of sin. There is this guilt with sin in some measure for all of us. For we have all turned aside. When the hardened sinner looks back on his child-days, when he remembers his simple, innocent life in the old home, when he sees his younger condition reflected in the frank countenance of some little child, be may well learn that his own self will be his accuser in the day of judgment.
III. THE INNOCENCE OF EARLY DAYS INSPIRES US WITH HOPES OF RESTORATION. Man is not naturally a brute. What he has been suggests what he may yet become. Absolute primitive innocence is indeed irrecoverably lost. The bloom of childhood can never be restored. Yet as Naaman's flesh became like the flesh of a little child after he had bathed seven times in the Jordan (2 Kings 5:14), it is possible to be converted, and become as a little child again (Matthew 18:3) in simplicity and a new purity of heart. This is the great Christian hope. The most abandoned sinner may, through Christ, be restored. He need not despair when he compares his present shame with his past innocence. The old fallen world may be recovered. The gospel of Christ goes forth to arrest the deepening degeneracy of mankind.