whole, illustrations such as these are the most powerful of all
arguments. The truest definition of evil is that which represents it
as something contrary to nature: evil is evil, because it is
unnatural; a vine which should bear olive berries, an eye to which
blue seems yellow, would be diseased: an unnatural mother, an
unnatural son, an unnatural act, are the strongest terms of
condemnation. It is this view which Christianity gives of moral evil:
the teaching of Christ was the recall of man to nature, not an
infusion of something new into Humanity. Christ came to call out all
the principles and powers of human nature, to restore the natural
equilibrium of all our faculties; not to call us back to our own
individual selfish nature, but to human nature as it is in God's
ideal--the perfect type which is to be realised in us. Christianity is
the regeneration of our whole nature, not the destruction of one atom
of it.

Now the nature of man is to adore God and to love what is god-like in
man. The office of the tongue is to bless. Slander is guilty because
it contradicts this; yet even in slander itself, perversion as it is,
the interest of man in man is still distinguishable. What is it but
perverted interest which makes the acts, and words, and thoughts of
his brethren, even in their evil, a matter of such strange delight?
Remember therefore, this contradicts your nature and your destiny; to
speak ill of others makes you a monster in God's world: get the habit
of slander, and then there is not a stream which bubbles fresh from
the heart of nature,--there is not a tree that silently brings forth
its genial fruit in its appointed season,--which does not rebuke and
proclaim you to be a monstrous anomaly in God's world.

4. The fourth point of guilt is the diabolical character of slander;