Turning now from the moral law and knowledge thereof to the acts and conduct to which ethical standards are applicable, we may consider the remaining conditions of what, in the strict sense, is to be called sin. Conscience and moral status, it has been said, are not innate ; they are socially acquired, as human experience evolves from its earliest stages. But certain instincts and im pulsive or appetitive tendencies are undoubtedly inherited. That is to say that in the body, with which an individual subject or soul becomes associated, are already ingrained aptitudes, etc., trans mitted and fixed by heredity, which evoke specific reactions and responses from the soul, with its actual and potential faculties and capacities. Such appetites, instincts, strivings, etc. are involun tary, because, as yet, will or volition is not in existence. They are necessary and inevitable ; the embodied soul is not responsible for them, and had no part in moulding them. They are also, from the biologist's point of view, natural or normal; not the outcome of derangement. Some of them, at least, are essential to the health and life of both individual and race. Theology must affirm that they belong to man, as it has pleased God to make him, i.e., through evolutionary process. Lastly they are not only non-moral, in that they are involuntary and prior to conscience, but also neutral, in respect of what shall eventually be made out of them by the moralized person. They are the basis of virtues as well as of vices. In themselves, therefore, these propensities, or tendencies of the stock, are not sinful ; no natural passion is base-born or con demnable. They are, however, the primary stuff out of which sinful conduct is shaped. But it is the will that shapes, not the stuff that is shaped, which alone calls for moral evaluation. They can no more be wicked than can alcohol or prussic acid. For the fact that they are strongly entrenched in us at birth, we are not responsible. Nor are we responsible, for the fact that they con tinue to assert themselves clamorously, after will and conscience have been acquired, and without respect for moral considerations; though it is thus that arise most of the "manifold temptations that death alone can cure." Temptation, however, is not sin; nor is temptability a sign of sinfulness—it is a condition of morality. But before these ethical and psychological reflections suggested themselves with the urgency they now possess, it was usual, and indeed natural, to call such inborn propensities sinful. Hence the expressions "inherited sin" and "original sin." Theologians who have framed and taught the doctrine of original sin have generally, though not universally, been willing to allow that original sin is not sin proper, and that, unlike actual sin, it is not a matter of moral responsibility and guilt. It is now generally admitted to be "sin" in but a figurative sense. Some would urge that retention of the old name "original sin" is no longer expedient, because ministering to confusion and inconsistency. What is "original" in the sense of innate or thrust upon us willy-nilly, cannot strictly be called sin. The root of sin is not a sinful root. For the fourth condition of the possibility of sinful activity is volition, and in deed intention. There must be capacity to choose between higher and lower ends, as has been recognized throughout the history of the doctrine of sin. Consequently, if there be in us, as some authorities have maintained, a moral taint that cleaves to us at our birth; some tendency, the origin of which must be beyond the conscious exercise of our freedom of will ; an abiding root of sin, which a man finds present in himself when his moral conscious ness awakes; it must be brought by the soul itself, and have been contracted voluntarily in a life previous to the soul's embodiment. This speculative view has found supporters here and there down the ages ; but we have no knowledge as to such life, and certainly, if the soul possessed such moral volition before embodiment, it must somehow have become dispossessed of it on entering into this life, because psychology can trace the development of volition and conscience which, at birth, are absent. This suggestion, like all other forms of doctrine of a fall, whether of the race collec tively or of each soul singly, has doubtless been cherished because it has seemed difficult to many minds to account otherwise for the prevalence—often assumed to be strictly universal—of sinfulness throughout mankind ; also, perhaps, because it seems to explain the emergence of moral evil in God's good world. But, as for the former of these motivations, it is enough to know that the race has solidarity in respect, not of ready-made sin, but of the non moral appetites, etc. which prompt the will to evil choice. As for the latter of them, any kind of fall such as is invoked to account for racial sinfulness, would seem only to put the difficulty further back, not to eliminate it. Evil must have entered into the human world somehow and at some time, whether in Adam, or in Satan, or in each soul in a previous life; and that presents just the same difficulty as does the origination of sin in each man in this life.
Indeed, in the case of the theory that sin originated in a previous life, the difficulty would seem to be increased. For had we all been in the same case as Milton's Satan, to account for all sinning without exception, each being the Adam of his own soul, and that before embodiment, is hardly possible; whereas our bodily nature supplies the motives which make our sinfulness explicable enough, however condemnable it be. On the other hand, the traditional doctrine that we all owe our sinfulness to the sin of the first parent of the race, either offends our moral consciousness and sense of responsibility or else confounds sinfulness with the non-moral "material" out of which our will makes sin.
Sin has, so far, been dealt with only in its elemental aspects and its earliest stages. It is, in fact, there that we encounter the controversial issues, and the features of the problem that present most difficulty and most interest for theology. The more advanced and complex stages present no further disputable issues. But it should be observed that from the dawn of volition, of thought or ideation, and of morality, our blind springs of action cease to be blind. When imbued with volitional response, they become desires, and eventually personal attitudes. Actions engender habits ; emo tions establish sentiments; and so on. We soon discover that appetites, the satisfaction of which yields pleasure, can be stimu lated, in order to be enjoyed. Hunger may be voluntarily trans formed into gluttony, sensibility into voluptuousness; and as knowledge and experience widen the lengths to which "making provision for the flesh" can be carried, become indefinitely ex tended. But it is not necessary to follow further the development of the intricacy of the moral life of man; the essentials for a sound psychology of sin are manifested, and can be most clearly studied, in the primary moral situations to which attention has here been almost exclusively directed.
a critical account of the main theories and treat ment from the standpoint of sin-consciousness, see W. E. Orchard, Modern Theories of Sin (19o9). For a discussion of sin on the lines indicated above, see F. R. Tennant, The Concept of Sin (1912). (F. R. T.) SIN, the name of the moon-god in Sumerian, derived from zu-en, usually written en-zu, "lord of wisdom." He became one of the principal deities of the (Semitic) Babylonian pantheon, and only in the period of the later West Semitic occupation (22nd 18th centuries) is found any trace of the pure Semitic cult of the moon god, when the title cammu, /Jammu "uncle" appears. As god of the new moon he has the title ge.f-ki, "brother of the earth," pronounced by the Semites Nannar>Nanna. The chief seats of his worship were Ur in the South and Harran in northern Assyria, but the cult at an early period spread to other centres, and tem ples to the moon-god are found in all the large cities of Baby lonia and Assyria. During the period (c. 2399-2282 B.C.) that Ur exercised a large measure of supremacy over the Euphrates valley, Sin was naturally regarded as the head of the pantheon. It is to this period that we must trace such designations of the god as "father of the gods," "chief of the gods," "creator of all things," and the like. The development of astrological science culminating in a calendar and in a system of interpretation of the movements and occurrences in the starry heavens would be an important factor in maintaining the position of Sin in the pan theon. The name of Sin's chief sanctuary at Ur was E-gish-shir gal, "house of the great light"; that at Harran was known as E-khul-khul, "house of joys." On seal-cylinders he is represented as an old man with flowing beard, with the crescent as his symbol. In the astral-theological system he is represented by the number 3o, and the planet Venus as his daughter by the number 15. The number 3o stands obviously in connection with the thirty days as the average extent of his course until he stands again in con junction with the sun. The "wisdom" personified by the moon god is likewise an expression of the science of astrology in which the observation of the moon's phases is so important a factor. The tendency to centralize the powers of the universe leads to the establishment of the doctrine of a triad consisting of Sin, Shamash and Ishtar (q.v.), personifying the moon, sun and Venus.
Nabunidus, the last king of Babylonia, inaugurated a move ment to elevate the cult of Sin to the supreme place in religion, a movement clearly based upon astrological and astronomical theory that the triad, moon, sun and Venus are the controlling forces of divine providence. There is no doubt but that the emphasis placed upon moon worship by Sargon of Agade is due to his Semitic connection ; in Arabia and throughout the Semitic races of Western Asia the moon god was from the beginning the most important deity. The consort of Sin was Ningal, to whom a special temple was built at Ur, and her cult was widely known in Syria where her name appears as Nikal. The cult of the Baby lonian Sin seems to have been particularly favoured by the Assyrian colony in Cappadocia in the 2 Ist–I9th centuries, and among the Hittites of Anatolia and Syria.