"Sin, then, is not a means to good. It is not "good in the making." The fall is not a "fall upward." Every yielding to temptation is a hindrance, not a help, to moral development; but every temptation offers what, rightly employed, is an indispensable means of moral development. For all moral development is through temptation to virtue. There can be no virtue without temptation; for virtue is victory over temptation. An untempted soul may be innocent, but cannot be virtuous, for virtue is the choice of right when wrong presses itself upon us and demands our choosing. How can we have courage, unless there is danger and apprehension of the danger? How can we have patience, unless there are burdens? How can we have fidelity, unless there is some trust to be maintained, and some temptation calling on us to leave the trust and be false to it? The scorn of "goody-goody" is justified, for "goody-goody" is innocence, not virtue; and the boy who never does anything wrong because he never does anything at all is of no use in the world. Temptation is struggle, and virtue emerges from struggle. And we cannot have the choice of right without the possibility of doing wrong; and choosing wrong is sin; and sin is fall; because it is choosing the animal from which we are emerging rather than the spiritual condition into which we have partially emerged. _The Means of Salvation: Saved by the Blood--i. e., The Life of the Christ:_ "Vicarious sacrifice is not an episode. It is the universal law of life. Life comes only from life. This is the first proposition. Lifegiving costs the life-giver something. That is the second proposition. Pain is travail-pain, birth-pain; and it is a part of the divine order--that is, of the order of nature--that the birth of a higher life should always be through the pain of another. "This is the law of God,--that is, the nature of God. For the laws of God are not edicts promulgated; they are the expressions of Himself; and the law that life comes only by the pouring out of life through suffering is an expression of the divine nature. This is the meaning of Paul's teaching in the eighth chapter of Romans: first, that it is the universal law that all life is by impartation of life; and, secondly, that this is universal because it is divine; that God Himself is the great Life-giver, and gives by His own suffering His life to the children of men.