ne there is a smash, as a rule, and the
greater the power that was driving the engine, the worse is the wreck
when it leaves the line. The lightning directed rightly becomes the
luminant by which we look on each other's faces to-night. That same
power might have brought havoc and destruction if it had not been
harnessed in the service of man. And so with the power that God has
given you; all desire for self-expression, all seeking of which you are
conscious for larger and better and richer life, is God-given; but it
may mean ruin and destruction unless you see that it is yours, not that
you may draw inward, but that you may give outward, yours not to keep
and hold, but yours wherewith to bless mankind. Sin is the tendency to
keep for self that which was meant for the world. "The wages of sin is
death," the death of soul. He who is guilty of sin is guilty of soul
murder. "All they that hate Me love death," and he that spreads pain
and ruin over other lives in the gratification of his own lower
instincts is using something which is God-given--yea, which is
essentially God's own life--in the wrong way. The only hope for him is
to realise that no act of sin was ever yet worth while, that it does
punish itself, must punish itself, for it shrivels and fetters the
soul. No eleventh-hour repentance will ever save you, and no cowardly
cry for relief will ever bring God's forgiveness into your soul, until
you have realised that sin and selfishness are one, and that what you
have failed to give forth of love and service represents the measure of
your soul poverty.

Even at the risk of prolixity and repetition I have thought it right to
insert these lengthy extracts from sermons which have been animadverted
upon. My readers will be able to judge of the fairness of the
criticism which, by abstracting a few lines, strove to make it appear
that my teaching denied the reality of sin. Here are the actual words
seen in their proper setting. If one were on the lookout for a good
illustration of the sinfulness of sin, perhaps the controversial
methods of the editor of the _British Weekly_ might furnish it. This
kind of criticism is on a par with that of the gentleman who once
startled an audience by declaring, "The Bible says there is no God."
He was right, of course, if it be legitimate to suppress the former
part of the passage, "The fool hath said in his heart there is no God."

It is time we had done with unreal talk ab