of his God-given nature.

To dwell in active, friendly, loving relation to all that is without; to
be

wedded to this goodly universe
In love and holy passion,

to be heirs with God of the spiritual riches it contains: this is life
indeed. "The gift of God is eternal life."

+Religion is the crown and consummation of ethics.+--Religion gathers up
into their unity the scattered fragments of duty and virtue which it has
been the aim of our ethical studies to discern apart. Religion presents
as the will of the all-wise, all-loving Father, those duties and virtues
which ethics presents as the conditions of our own self-realization.
Religion is the perfect circle of which the moral virtues are the
constituent arcs. Fullness of life is the reward of righteousness, the
gift of God, the one comprehensive good, of which the several rewards
which follow the practice of particular duties and virtues are the
constituent elements.

THE TEMPTATION.

+The universal will of God, working in conformity with impartial law,
and seeking the equal good of all, often seems to be in sharp conflict
with the interests of the individual self.+--If his working is
irresistible we are tempted to repine and rebel. If his will is simply
declared, and left for us to carry out by the free obedience of our
wills, then we are tempted to sacrifice the universal good to which the
divine will points, and to assert instead some selfish interest of our
own. Self-will is, from the religious point of view, the form of all
temptation. The ends at which God aims when he bids us sacrifice our
immediate private interests are so remote that they seem to us unreal;
and often they are so vast that we fail to comprehend them at all. In
such crises faith alone can save us--faith to believe that God is wiser
than we are, faith to believe that his universal laws are better than
any private exceptions we can make in our own interest, faith to
believe that the universal good is of more consequence than our
individual gain. Such faith is hard to grasp and difficult to maintain;
and consequently the temptation of self-will is exceedingly seductive,
and is never far from any one of us.

THE VICE OF DEFECT.

+Sin is short-coming, missing the mark of our true being, which is to be
found only in union with God.+--Sin is the attempt to live apart from
God, or as if there were no God. It is transgression of his laws. It is
the attempt to make a