development, until it causes the death of the body, if the body is not protected from its growth, so we may follow any sin in its development to the death of the soul, if the soul is not similarly protected. All sin, when allowed to increase according to its own laws, is the destruction of both soul and body.

Macbeth's mind became diseased; and we may find many an Iago in our insane asylums to-day, for, with all his cleverness, no Iago can, in the long run, keep control of his mind if his selfish plans are frustrated. The loathsome diseases of the body which are liable to overtake a Don Juan may only be spoken of, or thought of, as a means of removing the blindness of those who, from dwelling upon the sensations of the body, come to think of sin as pleasant. When their blindness is removed, the least touch of the sensuality which causes the disease will fill them with wholesome horror. It is wonderfully provided by the Creator that any sensation, which is selfishly indulged in, any sensation that a man remains in for its own sake, must lead first to satiety,—and then to worse than satiety and death. This is true both of all selfish sensations of the body and of all useless emotions of the mind. Our sensations and our emotions must be obedient servants to a wholesome, vigorous love of usefulness, or they become infernal masters whose rule leads only to weakness and death.

The old asceticism,—the spiritual stupidity of primitive times,—placed the world, the flesh, and the devil on a level of equality, whereas both the world and the flesh are capable of noble uses, but the devil is not. The world and the flesh are servants, and good servants; they are necessary instruments for the carrying out of the Divine purpose in human life. But the devil is merely the perversion of good things to useless, trivial, and degrading ends. He has no power in himself except as we give him power, and we give him power every day when we associate the idea of the world with that of the villains in it, and when we debase the flesh by not realizing the clean, good service for which it is intended. Indeed, we are really feeding the devil in so far as our standards of life are negative, and not positive,—in so far as we are only busy in protecting ourselves from worse sin or from worse disease, instead of casting out all sin and disease as fast as we perceive them in ourselves, and working toward the highest possible standard of wholesome life for body and soul. To "look to the Lord and shun evils as sins," means to hold to the standard of health given us by the Lord for both body and soul, so that it may become more and more clear as we apply it to life with persistent strength. Our present standards of life are warped. The abnormal has become so familiar to us as to seem normal. The joy and life-giving power of fresh air for soul and body is too little known to us. A thoroughly healthy world, with wholesome habits of mind and body, is almost out of our ken. The lower standards have become too generally a matter of course,—that is why we do not think of brave and wholesome manhood when we use the expression "a man of the world."

It is a certain fact that no man can understand and live in what is good and wholesome, of his own free will, without having had temptations,—and strong ones,—to what is evil and unwholesome. Thus a knowledge of the evil in the world enlarges a man's experience just in so far as he uses that knowledge to lead him to the opposite good. A knowledge of evil warps a man's character,—however broad his experience may be,—just in so far as he yields to