The Unpardonable Sin
H. W. Beecher. Mark 3:28-30 Truly I say to you, All sins shall be forgiven to the sons of men, and blasphemies with which soever they shall blaspheme:… I. What are the SIGNS? This I speak by way of relief to many and many a needlessly tried soul. The inevitable sign of the commission of the unpardonable sin is a condition in which men are past feeling; and if a man has come into that condition in which he is unpardonable — incurable — the sign will be that he does not care. If you find a person who is alarmed lest he is in that condition, his very alarm is a sign that he is not in it. I know not what was the particular case that led to the request that I should preach on the subject; but if there be those that are suffering because they fear that they have committed the unpardonable sin, in the first place, it is not a single act, it is a condition that men come into by education; and, in the second place, that condition is one in which there is a cessation of sensibility. It is a want of spiritual pulse. It is a want of the capacity of spiritual suffering. Therefore, if you do not suffer at all, it may be, it is quite likely, that you are in that condition. Those who are in that condition are never troubled about their spiritual state. But where persons are anxious on the subject of their spiritual state, and are in distress about it, and talk much respecting it, they are the very ones that cannot be in the unpardonable condition. What would you think of a man who should anxiously go around asking every physician if he did not think he was blind, when the reason of his anxiety was that he had such acuteness of vision that he saw everything so very plainly and continuously? Acuteness of vision is not a sign of blindness. What would you think of a man that should go to his physician to ascertain if he was not growing deaf, because his hearing was so good? The symptoms of deafness do not go that way. And how incompatible with the condition in which one has committed the unpardonable sin is fear lest one has committed it. That condition is one in which a person is past all feeling, and is given over to his wickedness. II. This subject will lead us to make an IMPORTANT DISCRIMINATION — one which we may all of us need — whether we are in a sinful state or are beginning to lead a Christian life. There is a tendency to fear great sins, and a tendency to be indifferent to little ones. Now, there are certain great sins that, being committed, may give such a moral shock to a man's constitution as to be fatal in their effects; but these are not usually fallen into. Men are not very much in danger of great sins. They are ten thousand times more in danger of little ones. Men are not in danger of committing perjury as much as they are of telling "white lies," as they are called. Men are not so much in danger of counterfeiting as they are of putting on little minute false appearances. Men are not so much in danger of committing burglary as they are of committing the myriad infinitesimal injustices with which life is filled. Any particular act, to be sure, such as I have alluded to, which of itself is simply as a particle of dust, is not so culpable as a great sin; but what is the effect on the constitution of a series of these offences that are so small as to be almost imperceptible? It is these little sins, continued and multiplied, that by friction take off the enamel of a man's conscience. It is these numberless petty wrongs that men do not fear, persisted in, that are the most damaging. I should dread the incursion into my garden, in the night time, of rooting swine, or trampling ox, or browsing buffalo; but, after all, aphides are worse than these big brutes. I could kill anyone, or half a dozen, or a score of them, if they came in such limited numbers; but when they swarm by the billion I cannot kill one in ten thousand of them — and what can I do? Myriads of these insignificant little insects will eat faster than I can work, and they are the pest and danger of the garden, as often my poor asters and roses testify. There is many and many a flower that I would work hard to save, but the fecundity of insect life will quite match and overmatch, any man's industry. Weakness multiplied is stronger than strength. Now, that which does the mischief is these aphides, these myriad infinitesimal worms, these pestiferous little sins, every one of which is called white, and is a mere nothing, a small point — a mote, a speck of dust. Why, many a caravan has been overtaken, smothered and destroyed by clouds of dust, the separate particles of which were so minute as to be almost invisible. Many men are afraid that they will be left to some great sin — and they ought to fear that; but they have not the slightest fear of that which is a great deal more likely to bring them to condemnation — the series of petty violations of conscience, and truth, and duty, with which human experience is filled. Here is where every man should most seriously ponder his condition, and ask himself, "What is the effect of the conduct that I am day by day evolving? Am I educating myself toward moral sensibility, or away from moral sensibility?" III. This leads me to say THAT EVERY MAN SHOULD TAKE HEED TO THE WAY IN WHICH HE TREATS HIS CONSCIENCE. If the light in him be darkness, how great is that darkness! When we put a lighthouse on the coast, that in the night mariners may explore the dark and terrible way of the sea, we not only swing glass around it to protect it, but we enclose that glass itself in a network of iron wire, that birds may not dash it in, the summer winds may not swoop it out, and that swarms of insects may not destroy themselves and the light. For if the light in the lighthouse be put out, how great a darkness falls upon the land and upon the sea. And the mariner, waiting for the light, or seeing it not, miscalculates, and perishes. Now, a man's conscience ought to be protected from those influences that would diminish its light, or that would put it out; but there are thousands of men who are every day doing their utmost to destroy this light. When they do wrong, their conscience rebukes them, and they instantly attempt to suppress it and put it down. They undertake to excuse themselves and palliate the wrong. The next day, when they do wrong, the same process goes on, and they make a deliberate war against their conscience; for it is a very painful thing for a man to do wrong and carry the hurt, and he feels that he must overcome this tormentor if he would have any peace, a great many men not only are making war against the light of God in the soul, but are beginning to feel the greatest complacency in their achievements. They come to a state in which they can lie and not feel bad. They come to a state in which they can do a great deal of injustice, and not have it strike them any mere as injustice. Men that have got along so far in this moral perversion that their conscience has ceased to trouble them, and they think of wrong-doing merely as a thing that is in the way of business, are sometimes surprised as their mind strikes back to the time when they were more sensitive to right, and they say, "I recollect that, ten or fifteen years ago, when I first began to do such things, I used to be so troubled about them that I lay awake nights; but, it is a long time since they have given me any trouble." They muse, and say, "How queer it is. I used to shrink from things that were not just right, and to be afraid to deviate in the least from the strictest rectitude; but I have got over it. Now I do not feel so. How is it? I wonder what has happened to me." Oh, yes; you wonder what has happened to you. There has been death in your house. The cradle is empty. Souls die. The moral element of your soul is dead. Why, many and many a man, who used to be sensitive to purity, whose cheek used to colour at the allusion to impurity, has got so now that the whole literature of impurity is familiar to him. Impure scenes, impure narratives, the whole morbid intercourse of impure minds, they now never feel any shrinking from. Their moral nature is seared as with a hot iron. There are men that come not only to be wicked, but to be struck through and through with wickedness, so that they love men that are, wicked, and hate men that are not. They come to have a great contempt for anything that is not wickedness, and to have a great regard, if not respect, for wickedness itself. And this they come to not at a plunge. Men never go down such a moral precipice headlong. They go down by degrees. The decline from a state of moral sensitiveness is very gradual — so gradual that it does not seem to men to be on the downward way. Flowers are round about their feet, the path is shaded and pleasant, and they go far down before they begin to have any sense of an approaching change. The way from right to wrong is a deceptive way, and a fatal way, and on it men go far along toward destruction before their suspicions are awakened. (H. W. Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: WEB: Most certainly I tell you, all sins of the descendants of man will be forgiven, including their blasphemies with which they may blaspheme;