have, in the sight of God, committed that sin. If I have made
the wrong choice, and am deterred by the faintest of moral scruples, as
well as, perhaps, by other considerations, from carrying it out, I am
really, although in a less degree, guilty.

Now we can fall back upon our main thought. The animal matter is
essentially self-regarding. This is not (_a_) the same thing as to say
that all actions of all animals are self-regarding. I see no difficulty
in believing that there may be adumbrations of the moral and spiritual in
animals below man, if the animal life is the manifestation, on a lower
plane, of the same Word Who is the Life of nature and the Light (the
higher reason and spiritual life) of man. Nor (_b_) is it the same thing
as to say that the desires of the animal nature are selfish. For
selfishness is a moral term and, as we have seen, moral attributes are
inapplicable except to a wrong choice of the will.

These self-regarding impulses of the animal nature are due to the fact,
that that nature is the result of the age-long struggle for existence.
These impulses have secured the survival and the predominance of man.

But man is more than a successful animal. He is made in the image of
God. In him, the Word is revealed, not as life only, but as light. In
an altogether higher sense than can be predicated of any part of creation
below man, he is a sharer in the Divine life.

Now that Divine life is the very life of Him Whose very essence and being
is Love. God is Love. What does this mean? It has never been better
expressed than in the following words: "God is a Being, not one of Whose
thoughts is for Himself. . . . Creation is one great unselfish thought of
God, the bringing into existence of beings who can know the happiness
which God Himself knows" (Dr. Askwith). What happiness is that? It is
explained, by the same writer, as the happiness which is found in the
promotion of the happiness, that is, in the largest sense, the well-being
of others.

We can now see the reason of the antagonism between the animal and the
Divine in ourselves, the real meaning of the Pauline antithesis between
the flesh and the Spirit, the old man and the new.

We are to "put off the old man." He is old, indeed, beyond our
imaginations of antiquity, for he is the product of the hoary animal
ancestry of our race. Our progress as successful competitors in the
struggle for animal existence, has been the waxing strong