the soul can
increase at another's cost, can increase by destroying what is
another's good. Apply that explanation or definition of sin to what
you know about life, and you will soon see when a man is facing the
deathward road, and how differently he acts when he is choosing the
lifeward road. There are men in this congregation who do not realise,
as they should, that lifewardness is God-wardness; but so it is. The
soul and the source of all things is God, and, consciously or
unconsciously, all men are seeking God in that they are seeking
self-expression, seeking life. The man, for instance, who is trying to
become rich is a man who is seeking to express himself, seeking power,
seeking life, seeking to thrust through the barriers that surround the
soul. They are all doing it; the veriest materialist among you is
seeking by his daily activities more abundant life. The young man here
who feels a burning ambition within his heart, a desire to exploit the
world and make a name for himself, to occupy a high station, is not
conscious of anything essentially unworthy. It all depends on what he
does with the impulse. What you are seeking, young man, is more
abundant life, and that is equivalent to seeking God. Life is God.
"Every good and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from
the Father of lights." And when the tendency goes round and works
havoc and ruin in the world, it still remains a quest for God, although
a blundering one. It is a misuse of divine energy. The man who got
drunk last night and gratified his lower nature in that delirious hour
would be surprised if you were to tell him when you see the result that
he was really seeking God, but so it is. He wants life, and thinks he
can get it this way. This is the reason why morbid excitement and the
craving for amusement have such power in human lives to-day. Your
_roue_ in Piccadilly who went out to destroy innocence was seeking life
while spreading death. It seems almost blasphemy to say it, but he was
seeking God and thinking--O woful blunder!--that he would find Him by
destroying something that God has made beautiful and fair. So with all
acts of selfish gratification of which men are capable--they are the
turning of the current of divine energy the wrong way, and seeking
self-gratification at the expense of something else that God has made.
It is a failure to see that we only obtain life by giving life. When
an engine goes off the li