In man’s social relations the same lust after self-gratification is found. The friendships of the world have this lustful basis, and herein are they distinguished from true friendship. The selfish man or woman seeks social and friendly intercourse for the pleasure or gratification it affords. They cultivate social and friendly relations solely with respect to the pleasures thereof. Consequently their love of _friends_ is only in their _use_ to them. They love their own gratification supremely, and they love the use of that which will administer thereto—consequently their attachments turn upon the question of gratification. They do nothing, they love nothing in forgetfulness of separate self. This distinction between true love and lust is to be made in every plane. The true impulse in every plane is the manifestation of the present God in that plane. The obeying that impulse is obeying God. The harmonizing with it is harmonizing with God; and the individual who in all things walks in accordance with its principles is walking with God, and is in the straight and narrow path which leadeth unto life; while he who, on the contrary, is led by his desire after self-gratification, in whatever plane, is in the broad road which leads to antagonism and death. “His lusts, when they conceive, bring forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” There is no middle ground between _love_ and _lust_; and unless the distinction be taken where I have taken it, it can not be taken at all. Excuse the principle of seeking after gratification as a true incentive to action, and you have destroyed the distinction between purity and impurity—between truth and falsehood—between holiness and sin. If action in respect to use and the gratification of self be the highest, then, indeed, there is no God—no virtue—no right. Such is the ultimate conclusion of those who know of no higher rule of action than pertains to the sphere of use and gratification. They know of no intrinsic virtue, goodness, purity, etc. They affirm of existence the qualities of good or bad from results. They say that a thing is right or wrong because the result is wrong, and not that the result was wrong because the thing itself was intrinsically bad. This is a very common error with the world. They are apt to trace the evil in the result and overlook it in the cause. The reason that lustful action is pernicious is not because its results are bad, but because the condition itself is intrinsically false, and can not produce other than false fruit.