Sin Piles Dynamite in the Soul's Dark Cellar

Isaiah's prophecy against Judah's idolatry unveils a principle far more universal: sin does not merely break external laws—it manufactures internal destruction. Maclaren identifies three movements in this fatal process.

First, sin withers. Like an unirrigated garden in the burning East, the soul grows barren. Not merely gross transgressions, but any godless living—habitual unveracity, neglect of duty, the besetting sin indulged in secret—kills "pure desires and innocent susceptibilities." Conscience itself becomes "stifled." The sinner separates himself from Elohim, "the source of all fruitfulness," and the heart dries up imperceptibly while "that evil thing... grows like a poisonous, blotched fungus in a wine-cask."

Second, sin makes men inflammable—ready for destruction "like tow or tinder." Here lies Maclaren's most piercing image: "The conspirators store the dynamite in a dark cellar. Conscience and memory are charged with explosives." Every wrong deed accumulates, every suppressed guilt hardens into material for retribution. Should a man ever be compelled to truly see himself, "to know what is the real moral character of his actions, and to be unable to give them up"—that itself is hell.

Third, the spark ignites. When a man is brought "face to face with his acts," the fuel ignites. We presently "shake off the burden of our actions by want of remembrance," but that merciful amnesia cannot endure forever. "Our own characters are the true Medusa-head which turns a man into stone when he sees it."