It is well to bear in mind that a thought, as well as a deed, is an act, may be a human and a moral act, and consequently may be a sin.  Human laws may be violated only in deed; but God, who is a searcher of hearts, takes note of the workings of the will whence springs all malice.  To desire to break His commandments is to offend Him as effectually as to break them in deed; to relish in one’s mind forbidden fruits, to meditate and deliberate on evil purposes, is only a degree removed from actual commission of wrong.  Evil is perpetrated in the will, either by a longing to prevaricate or by affection for that which is prohibited.  If the evil materializes exteriorly, it does not constitute one in sin anew, but only completes the malice already existing.  Men judge their fellows by their works; God judges us by our thoughts, by the inner workings of the soul, and takes notice of our exterior doings only in so far as they are related to the will.  Therefore it is that an offense against Him, to be an offense, need not necessarily be perpetrated in word or in deed; it is sufficient that the will place itself in Opposition to the Will of God, and adhere to what the Law forbids.

Sin is not the same as vice.  One is an act, the other is a state or inclination to act.  One is transitory, the other is permanent.  One can exist without the other.  A drunkard is not always drunk, nor is a man a drunkard for having once or twice overindulged.

In only one case is vice less evil than sin, and that is when the inclination remains an unwilling inclination and does not pass to acts.  A man who reforms after a protracted spree still retains an inclination, a desire for strong drink.  He is nowise criminal so long as he resists that tendency.

But practically vice is worse than sin, for it supposes frequent wilful acts of sin of which it is the natural consequence, and leads to many grievous offenses.

A vice is without sin when one struggles successfully against it after the habit has been retracted.  It may never be radically destroyed.  There may be unconscious, involuntary lapses under the constant pressure of a strong inclination, as in the vice of parsing, and it remains innocent as long as it is not wilfully yielded to and indulged.  But to yield to the ratification of an evil desire or propensity, without restraint, is to doom oneself to the most prolific of evils and to lie under the curse of God.

CHAPTER VI.  SIN.

If the Almighty had never imposed upon His creatures a Law, there would be no sin; we would be free to do as we please.  But the presence of God’s Law restrains our liberty, and it is by using, or rather abusing, our freedom, that we come to violate the Law.  It is for this reason that Law is said to be opposed to Liberty.  Liberty is a word of many meanings.  Men swear by it and men juggle with it.  It is the slogan in both camps of the world’s warfare.  It is in itself man’s noblest inheritance, and yet there is no name under the sun in which more crimes are committed.