Daily Inspiration Quote by George A. Smith

Sin, in George A. Smith's framing, isn’t a dusty doctrine pinned to a pulpit bulletin; it’s an unresolved wound. The line refuses the modern temptation to treat moral failure as either an outdated superstition or a solvable technical problem. “To us” draws a boundary around a believing community, a subtle rebuke to the idea that enlightenment, progress, or better institutions have made the older language of sin unnecessary. Smith isn’t arguing for gloom. He’s insisting on seriousness.

The sentence works because it holds two registers at once: mystery and pain. Mystery means sin can’t be fully domesticated by explanation. You can map causes, name pressures, diagnose patterns, but you don’t arrive at a neat equation that makes wrongdoing feel purely mechanical. Pain means it isn’t merely a legal category or a theological bookkeeping item; it is experienced as rupture, shame, alienation, and damage that radiates outward. Put together, the phrase pushes back against any spirituality that wants the comfort of forgiveness without the discomfort of moral depth.

Context matters. Smith, a 19th-century American clergyman, is speaking in an era intoxicated with confidence: reform movements, expanding institutions, a growing faith in progress. His sentence punctures that optimism without rejecting improvement outright. The intent is pastoral and disciplinary: keep the congregation from mistaking social advancement for inner transformation. Beneath it sits a warning and a comfort: you’re not uniquely broken for feeling the sting; the sting is evidence you’re awake.