of the wonderful powers with which God had endowed him, and to delight in
himself. He began to think: "Must such a being as I always remain dependent
on God?" He exalted himself, pride asserted itself in separation from God,
and that very moment he became, instead of an angel in Heaven, a devil in
hell. Self turned to God is the glory of allowing the Creator to reveal
Himself in us. Self turned away from God is the very darkness and fire of
hell.

We all know the terrible story of what took place further; God created man,
and Satan came in the form of a serpent and tempted Eve with the thought
of becoming as God, having an independent self, knowing good and evil. And
while he spoke with her, he breathed into her, in those words, the very
poison and the very pride of hell. His own evil spirit, the very poison of
hell, entered humanity, and it is this cursed self that we have inherited
from our first parents. It was that self that ruined and brought
destruction upon this world, and all that there has been of sin, and of
darkness, and of wretchedness, and of misery; and all that there will be
throughout the countless ages of eternity in hell, will be nothing but the
reign of self, the curse of self, separating man and turning him away from
his God. And if we are to understand fully what Christ is to do for us, and
are to become partakers of a full salvation, we must learn to know, and to
hate, and to give up entirely this cursed self.

Now what are the works of self? I might mention many, but let us take the
simplest words that we are continually using,--self-will, self-confidence,
self-exaltation. Self-will, pleasing self, is the great sin of man, and it
is at the root of all that compromising with the world which is the ruin of
so many. Men can not understand why they should not please themselves and
do their own will. Numbers of Christians have never gotten hold of the idea
that a Christian is a man who is never to seek his own will, but is always