The Mark

This book is a companion to The New Man by Dr Maurice Nicoll. It discusses, in relation to the Gospels, the idea that real religion is about another man, latent but unborn, in every man. The end of this transformation of a man is thought of as The Mark to be aimed at. The author explains that in the Gospels the word translated as sin means in the literal Greek missing the mark, as of a spear thrown at some object and failing to hit it. And from meaning to miss the mark it came to mean failing in one's purpose, and so erring or wrong doing. It is Dr Nicoll's contention that when a man is overpowered by outer life and influenced only by all that acts upon him from outside, and argues only from what he can see, he is machine-driven by his senses, and internally, the wrong way round. He is dominated by external life and has no life in himself. That part of him which is truly himself, and from which his own individual existence and growth can begin is lost. It is in the wrong place. And this is sin. That is, in this sense, everyone has missed the mark, missed the idea of his own existence.