Sin. Pastor Roberts at St. Ebbes spoke on Romans, and how hard it was to keep the Ten Commandments. Bosh. It's easy. The idea of sin should be based on the greatness of God, not on my baseness.(Click here to read more.)

I'm not that bad---by human standards. I *can* keep the Ten Commandments-- or rather, could if I wanted to. The Sabbath commandment is obsolete anyway. On the other hand, can I be holy? No, not by myself. Not even if I tried very hard and became an ascetic in the woods, Father Sergius style (see Tolstoy).

Man is base by comparison with God, and by comparison with God we are all about equally base. It is right for us to love God and to wish we could be holy too. And just as we would try to please a human object of love, so we try to please God, not because we think we will succeed, but because it is fitting to try even so. We want to be worthy of the object of our love, and even if we know we are not and cannot be, we still want to try.