CHAPTER FOUR
SIN

God then is Love, and has created a world for those who love. It is easy to imagine what vast possibilities of happiness lay in such a Creation: but we do not need imagination to bring before us the equally vast possibilities of unhappiness which lay in God's scheme. History and personal experience tell us the same tale of man's inhumanity to man, and the consequent groaning of the whole Creation. We are not, however, always ready to put the blame where it lies, nor to acknowledge the simplicity of the cure.

In one word the whole trouble lies in the selfishness of men and angels. We are perfectly free to love; every baby does it! But we are equally free to hate; every grown up has done that. There is nothing mysterious about the problem or its solution. If we love God and each other our troubles will disappear. A world that will work well with lovers in it, will fail miserably when it is peopled by haters.

God, who knew this only too well, has therefore laid down a law: "the soul that sinneth it shall die". Sin is every desire of a selfish man, who is determined to seek his own happiness at any cost to others. In the end the selfish man is not contented unless he can push his way to the top, and history is largely the record of men who climbed up on the corpses of their rivals. From Nimrod and Pharaoh to Napoleon and Hitler the same old tale is told and the final chapter of our age will record the rise and fall of the Arch-Tyrant of all, Anti-Christ.