world of our own, from which in whole or in part
we try to exclude God, and escape the jurisdiction of his laws. All
wrong-doing, all vice, all neglect of duty, is in reality a violation of
the divine will. But not until the individual comes to recognize the
divine will, and in spite of this recognition that all duty is divine,
deliberately turns aside from God and duty together, does vice become
sin.

THE VICE OF EXCESS.

+Devotion to God as distinct from or in opposition to devotion to those
concrete duties and human relationship wherein the divine will is
expressed, is hypocrisy.+--"If a man say I love God and hateth his
brother he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath
seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen."

Pure religion begins in faith and ends in works. It draws from God the
inspiration to serve in righteousness and love our fellow-men. If faith
stop short of God, and rest in church, or creed, or priest; if work stop
short of actual service of our fellow-men, and rest in splendor of
ritual or glow of pious feeling, or orthodoxy of belief; then our
religion becomes a vain and hollow thing, and we become Pharisees and
hypocrites.

THE PENALTY.

+The wages of sin is death.+--The penalty of each particular vice we
have seen to be the dwarfing, stunting, decay, and deadening of that
particular side of our nature that is effected by it. Intemperance
brings disease; wastefulness brings want; cruelty brings brutality;
ugliness brings coarseness; exclusiveness brings isolation; treason
brings anarchy. Just in so far as one cuts himself off from the moral
order which is the expression of God's will; just in so far as there is
sin, there is privation, deadening, and decay. As long as we live in
this world it is impossible to live an utterly vicious life; to cut
ourselves off completely from God and his order and his laws. To do that
would be instant death. The man who should embody all the vices and none
of the virtues, would be intolerable to others, unendurable even to
himself. The penalty of an all-round life of vice and sin would be
greater than man could endure and live. This fearful end is seldom
reached in this life. Some redeeming virtues save even the worst of men
from this full and final penalty of sin. The man, however, who
deliberately rejects God as his friend and guide to righteous living;
the man who deliberately makes self-will and sin the ruling principle of
his life,