substance in riotous living.' To claim myself for my own; to act
independently of, or contrary to, the will of God; to try to shake
myself clear of Him; to have nothing to do with Him, even though it
be by mere forgetfulness and negligence, and, in all my ways to
comport myself as if I had no relations of dependence on and
submission to him--that is sin. And there may be that oblivion or
rebellion, not only in the gross vulgar acts which the law calls
crimes, or in those which conscience declares to be vices, but also
in many things which, looked at from a lower point of view, may be
fair and pure and noble. If there is this assertion of self in them,
or oblivion of God and His will in them, I know not how we are to
escape the conclusion that even these fall under the class of sins.
For there can be no act or thought, truly worthy of a man, situated
and circumstanced as we are, which has not, for the very core and
animating motive of it, a reference to God.

Now, when I come and say, as my Bible teaches me to say, that this is
the deepest view of the state of humanity that sin reigns, I do not
wish to fall into the exaggerations by which sometimes that statement
has been darkened and discredited; but I do want to press upon you,
dear brethren, this, as a matter of _personal_ experience, that
wherever there is a heart that loves, and leaves God out, and
wherever there is a will that resolves, determines, impels to action,
and does not bow itself before Him, and wherever there are hands that
labour, or feet that run, at tasks and in paths self-chosen and
unconsecrated by reference to our Father in heaven, no matter how
great and beautiful subsidiary lustres may light up their deeds, the
very heart of them all is transgression of the law of God. For this,
and nothing else or less, is His law: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy