Now this characteristic of the Bible and of our Saviour’s teaching explains, and in great degree justifies, the universal craving of men and women for happiness. The pursuit of happiness in one form or another is the most universal motive of human conduct. It inspires some of our best exertions, and it prompts most of our sins. The motive of our first mother, as described in the third chapter of Genesis, is still that of nearly all of us, in one way or another. “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat.” The world, the flesh, and the devil are perpetually offering men fruits of this kind, and the craving for the happiness they promise is so great that men and women seize them, in spite of the knowledge they have in their consciences that to do so is wrong and against the will of God. In daily life we find that different fruits--forbidden fruits--appeal to different classes of men and women, but they are all liable to be attracted by some fruit or other and to be possessed by some “ruling passion.” It is striking, moreover, to look at the course of history, and observe how different fruits, different ideals, have attracted the various nations of the world. To the Greek the attraction was that of beauty and art, and their temptation was to give themselves up to the pleasures which those ideals could afford them, with but little moral restraint. The fruit which most attracted the Roman mind was that of rule and power. The passion, indeed, for creating great empires has been one of the strongest in mankind. We see it in full strength in the great Assyrian and Babylonian empires, and, unhappily, we see it in full force in a great nation of the present day. These pleasures and glories have accordingly been the subject of a vast amount of human literature--poetry, and history, and song.