ard, and the Christ stands for the tendency to give,
and live outward. The former tendency is what I call the
deathward--deathward for all else but itself; and the Christ is the
lifeward, life for all else but itself. Yet--curious inversion of
earlier experience--the deathward tendency results in death to itself
in the spiritual region, and the lifeward tendency results in life to
him who gives life. "I have power to lay it down, and I have power to
take it again." I want you to realise here, then, that the Christ in
humanity is the life-giver of the soul. They who are possessed of the
Christ spirit are they who have and can give the more abundant life.

We have briefly examined the two tendencies of which I have spoken;
have you realised that in the things of the spirit the deathward
tendency is what we call sin? Sin is selfishness; it is the attempt to
misuse the energies of God; it is the expansion of individuality at the
expense of the race. I do not know that you can arrive at a much more
thorough explanation of the nature of sin than that. Men blunderingly
attempt to classify virtues, and think of sin as simply the failure to
attain them. It is not that, it is something deeper; sin is the
attempt to minister to self at the expense of that which is outside
self. It lives by death to others, or seeks to do so.

When I was away a few weeks ago I paid a visit to Monte Carlo to see
what it was like, and went into the famous gambling saloon, and stood
for a while looking at the faces of the players. I could not see
anything very different from what I see now; the people who were
engaged in that all-engrossing pursuit might have been in church, they
were so quiet, so orderly, and so apparently passionless. Yet I
felt--it may have been a preacher's prejudice--that the moral
atmosphere of that place was one in which I did not want to remain;
there was something bad there, and I think I could discern what it was.
The gambler is essentially a man who is trying to get something for
nothing; he is drawing to himself that which he supposes will give him
more satisfying and abundant life. Let who will suffer; it is not his
concern. What is lifeward for him may be deathward for them; he is
willing that it should be so--that is the sin. Sin is always a
mistake,--a soul's mistake; it is the carrying up into the spiritual
region of that stern and terrible law of the physical world, the
survival of an organism at the