himself doesn’t arrive. Obviously, it is possible that he has been lost in the sea. While waiting for her husband, Hester and a young local minister called Arthur Dimmesdale fall in love with each other. They commit adultery secretly. Because of Hester’s Pregnancy, the secret is finally discovered.
According to The Bible, everyone is sinful. That is the opinion of the original sin: when God creates the world, He first creates a man called Adam and then a woman called Eve. They live happily in the Garden of Eden. God tells them that they can eat every kind of fruit in the garden except those on the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Instigated by the serpent, the two can not control their curiosity and violates God’s order and eat the fruits from that particular tree. That enrages God. From that time on, they become sinful and are expelled from the Garden of Eden. However, sin doesn’t stop. It is passed from generation to generation by reproduction of Adam and Eve. All successive generations are their descendants and therefore inherit their sin. So at the time one is born, he/she bears evil and has the root of committing crime.
According to the principle of the original sin, Hester Prynne is not an exception. She is also the offspring of Adam and Eve. The inside of her flows their bloods and she of course inherits their original sin. Thus she is a sinner from the beginning of her life.
Are there any other standards to judge whether a person is sinful?The answer is positive. The criterion should not be the common custom. Instead, it should be the God’s standard. Because according to the common custom, it is very difficult to judge sometimes. Everybody is a mixture of virtue and evil and the emphasis of everyone’s selfish desire is quite different. Some cravenly fear death, some cling to woman’s charms, some seek only profits and some hanker after reputation. Some are frank and honest and others sly and cunning. Therefore it is hard to decide who is right and who is wrong. Furthermore, the common custom is relative and changing. For example, twenty years ago, to commit adultery was enough to ruin a person’s fame. However, in today’s society, cohabitation before marriage is universal. Besides, although some people display higher moral standards than others, they still can’t get rid of selfishness and avoid committing crime. If we adopts the criterion of the common custom, although we know that we are not innocent, we will comfort ourselves that we may be worse than some people, but still better than others.
Thus we can only use God’s criteria to decide whether or not a person is sinful. God’s criteria are The Ten Commandments and The Seven Deadly Sins.
The Ten Commandments:
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of
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