trampling upon things that are beautiful and good, are engaged in this dim, blundering quest for God, whom to know is life eternal. The _roué_ you saw in Piccadilly last night, who went out to corrupt innocence and to wallow in filthiness of the flesh, was engaged in his blundering quest for God. He is looking for Him along the line of the wrong tendency; he has been gathering to himself what he took to be more abundant life, "but sin, when it hath conceived bringeth forth death"--death to the sinner as well as to his victim, death of what is deepest and truest in the soul. Yet--I repeat it--all men are seeking life, life more abundant, even in their selfishness and wrong-doing, seeking life by the deathward road. "Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly longed for death. 'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, O life, not death, for which we pant, More life and fuller than I want." On the following Sunday I preached a sermon entitled the "Nature of Sin," in which the same point was reëmphasised with even greater distinctness, as the following extract will show:-- I think I startled some of you last Sunday morning when I happened to remark that sin was, after all, a quest for God--a mistaken quest, but none the less a quest for God, for all that. I want to explain to you to-night somewhat more in detail what I mean by this, because the more clearly we can see the truth the more clearly we can perceive sin to be a soul's blunder. There are two tendencies discernible throughout nature and in human history. These two tendencies are essentially opposed, are ever in conflict, and ever will be until the whole world is subdued to Christ, and God is all in all. I called them last Sunday morning from the pulpit the deathward and the lifeward respectively. The terms are not very satisfactory, because the deathward tendency usually masquerades as the lifeward, and the lifeward often looks like the deathward. That is why sin is ever possible. A man thinks to get something by it, and though he finds out his mistake afterward, yet he supposes it to be for him the lifeward road. On the other hand, the utterly unselfish deed often looks as though it were a deed that would bring destruction upon the doer. Not so. Jesus Christ saw right to the heart of things when He said, "He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for My sake the same shall find it." If you substitute for the words "for My sake," "for truth's sake," or "for life's sake," you will get just the same meaning,--"he that keeps back his life shall lose it, and he that gives forth his life shall find it."