himself off from that on which his life depends. "The soul that sinneth it shall die."

All sin brings with it a sense of guilt, a sense of personal blameworthiness. This is not liability for punishment, not even the fear of punishment; it is the responsibility which rests upon one when he has committed a sin. From this sense of guilt all men seek to be free.

After I had spoken on Sunday at the University of Iowa, a man came to my room at the hotel to talk with me about his life. He started by telling me he had not come to talk religion. Then he told me that he was a Jew, but did not believe there was a God or that there was any reality in sin. He then told me that he had done a certain thing (a heinous sin, though he did not name it so), that he had left his home to escape punishment and had finally entered the university. "Now," said he, "what I want to know is, Will it be all right if I live like a gentleman from now on?"

Looking straight at him I said: "How long did you say ou have been in the university?"

"Three years."

"And have you tried to be a gentleman all these years?" His eyes flashed fire as he said: "I certainly have." "Well," said I, "Is it all, all right?"

For a moment he seemed dazed, and then, leaning forward, he said: O but the memory of that awful deed; how can I get rid of it?"

That is the sense of guilt consequent upon sin. Sin is the destroyer of happiness, the defiler of character, the despoiler of homes, the death of all real life. Sin deceives men. Sin makes men forget the sacred trusts of life. Sin makes men slaves. All this and more Christ said about sin. The great need of Christianity to-day is to realize anew the heinousness of sin; to see what it does, and how it wrecks and blights and deadens and blackens. It is a veritable body of death—foul, rotting, putrefying-and our freedom from it is our one salvation. The bitter cry of the world is for this freedom. It is the heinousness of sin that gives point and urgency to personal work. If sin does these things for man, how can we rest content without trying to lead men back from sin to God?

Meditation: Is there a sin in my heart; and do I know where to find peace? Do I see other men sick from sin, and will I do nothing for them?

STUDY IV. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF
CHRISTIANITY.

"And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself." (Luke x. 27.)

"And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise." (Luke vi. 31.)

"Thou knowest the commandments, Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor thy father and mother. And he said unto him, Teacher, all these things have I observed from my youth. And Jesus looking upon him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go, sell whatever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me." (Mark x. 19-21.)

PART 5. DOES CHRISTIANITY OFFER A FINAL STANDARD FOR MORALS?

THE backbone of the Christian moral standard is the Ten Commandments. There we have a definite command against the worship of idols, profanity, Sabbath desecration, irreverence to parents, murder, adultery, lying, covetousness. As a moral code, perhaps this is the best the world's literature affords. But even this is far from sufficient. It does not cover nearly all the relationships of life; and morality, based on this code alone, would be barren enough. Jesus Christ evidently recognized this fact, so he went beyond the law to lay down the precepts of the gospel. He took morality out of the single realm of action and pushed it back into the realm of motive. He said not only was the man who took life a murderer, but even the man who was angry with his brother and had murderous thoughts against him was guilty of the crime.

But no code or set of rules can cover all cases, even though that code referred to the specific motives of a man's heart. There must be something deeper than this, if the moral standard is not to be outgrown. Most of the failures of religious sects in the moral realm have arisen from an attempt to follow literally a set of rules. But men outgrow rules. They advance, but rules do not advance with them; hence it arises that the moral life of the people may be far higher than the simple rules by which they are supposed to mold their conduct.

Jesus Christ met this situation by transferring morals into the realm of life principles. He said if you are in doubt, then do the thing which you would want your neighbor to do to you. Put yourself in your neighbor's place, and ask what you would then think of your proposed action. If from this outside point you can wholly approve it, then it must be unselfish and worthy. Thus the principle of love becomes the determinant of the quality of action. Whatever is selfish, whatever will hurt another, even though it may apparently serve your own ends, that thing is morally wrong.

In the ethics of Jesus, love is the final standard. No act which cannot pass that standard is accounted worthy or moral. Every act which is incited by the motive of love, although it may fall short of its mark, nevertheless has in it the quality of worthiness because it has a worthy motive behind it.

In this light lovelessness is as evil as passion or appetite, and one can move away from God as rapidly by the one road as by the other. Selfishness is sin, and love is life.

This gives us at once a final and complete standard for morals. The human race being what it is, can never outgrow unselfish love; and by as much as that holy passion grows in the human heart, by just so much will the moral standards of Jesus be advanced.

STUDY IV. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF
CHRISTIANITY.

"And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." (John xvii. 3.)

"But when he came to himself he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight: I am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to his father. But while he was yet afar off, his father saw him, and was moved with compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him,. Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight: I am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring the fatted calf, and kill it, and let us eat, and make merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry." (Luke xv. 17-24.)

"Even so, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." (Luke xv. 10.)

PART 6. WHAT IS SALVATION?

IN the non-Christian religions the most prominent element in salvation is freedom from the results of sin. Escape from something unpleasant or painful is the heart of their message.

Christian salvation contemplates saving man from the awful results of sin, but it goes much deeper than simple freedom from punishment. Sin brings with it not only a sense of guilt but a state of guilt and uncleanness. Christian salvation through repentance and forgiveness removes both

the sense of guilt and the uncleanness consequent upon sin. (Cf. Study I.)

But Christian salvation is not simply freedom from sin and its guilt, which comes from submitting one's self to the life of a forgiving Christ; it has a positive content in it that brings one back into proper relationship with those for whom we are made.

"A person is lost when he gets away from the person to whom he belongs and is in danger of not getting back. One person may get away from another without being separated from him in space. A child who cares nothing for his father, and would be equally content to go with one of the hundreds of persons passing him and his father on the street, is more hopelessly 'lost' to his father than is the child who, a block away from his father, stands frightened and crying for him."

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"If to be lost is to fail to care for God as a Father and for men as brothers, then to be 'found' or to be 'saved,' both of which were favorite words of Jesus, is to be brought to feel a vital, personal interest in God as a Father and in men as brothers. It is to take one's proper place in God's family."

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To sum up the teachings of studies one and two, to be saved, in Christian terminology, means that a man has become sick of his sin; has come back to Christ in simple manhood and asked forgiveness; has had his sin forgiven, his sense of estrangement removed; has found a new power for life; and has now taken his place in the family of God as a true son to his Heavenly Father and as a true brother to his fellow-men, and this is Life. No other religion has any such fundamental gospel of salvation.

'Bosworth's "Teachings of Jesus and His Apostles," p. 116. "Ibid., p. 118.