he consciousness of the rabbit or the stag,
not by yours. In the slaughter nothing perishes but the form, the life
returns to the Soul of the universe.

+The nature of sin.+--What, then, is sin? In the light of the
foregoing considerations that question should not be difficult to
answer. Some of my recent critics have been declaring that I deny the
existence of sin, and am teaching that as there is no sin there is no
need for Atonement. This looks like wilful misrepresentation, for my
words on the subject have been clear enough and I have nothing to
un-say, but perhaps it would be better to allow that the critics have
made the mistake of rushing into print without carefully examining the
utterances which they denounce. Let me say, then, that sin is the
opposite of love. All possible activities of the soul are between two
poles,--self on the one hand and the common life on the other.
Everything we can think or say or do is in one or other of these
directions; we are either living for the self at the expense of the
whole, or we are fulfilling the self by serving the whole. Sin is
therefore selfishness. If the true life is the life which is lived in
terms of the whole, then the sinful life is the life which is lived for
self alone. No man, however depraved, succeeds in living the selfish
life all the time; if he did he would sink below the level of the
brutes. Sin makes for death; love makes for life. Sin is self-ward;
love is All-ward. Sin is always a blunder; in the long run it becomes
its own punishment, for it is the soul imposing fetters upon itself,
which fetters must be broken by the reassertion of the universal life.
Sin is actually a quest for life, but a quest which is pursued in the
wrong way. The man who is living a selfish life must think, if he
thinks about it at all, that he can gratify himself in that way, that
is, he can get more abundant life. But in this he is mistaken; he is
trying to cut himself off from the source of life. He is like a man
seated on the branch of a tree and sawing it off from the trunk. But
when theologians talk of the wrath of God against sin, and the wrong
which sin has inflicted upon God, they employ figures of speech which
are distinctly misleading. In fact, they do not seem to have a clear
idea as to what sin really is. They use vague language about it as
though it were some kind of corporate offence against God of which the
whole race has been guilty without be