will lead the civilisation that it controls to inevitable disaster.  Our Lord said:  “Take heed and beware of covetousness; for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth.”  And He went on to speak a parable which has come to be known as the Parable of the Rich Fool.  The “practical man” may be as angered as he likes by this teaching, but in his soul he knows that our Lord was right.  When such things are pointed out from the pulpit the “practical man” says:  “What would become of the Church were it not for the rich and the successful?” I think that the answer is that in that case the Church would no more represent the rich and would have a fair chance of once more representing Jesus Christ.

It may seem at the first sight that of the mortal sins lust was not represented here upon the Sorrowful Way; but that, I think is but a superficial analysis of the nature of lust, thinking only of some manifestations of it.  There is however one sin that has its roots deep in lust which psychologists tell us is one of its commonest manifestations, and that is cruelty.  Lust is not always, but commonly, cruel; and the desire to inflict pain on others is a very common form of its expression.  There are sights we have seen or incidents we have read of, it may be a boy torturing an animal or another child, it may be a shouting mass of men about a prize-ring, it may be soldiers sacking a town,—­when the action seems so senseless that we are at a loss to account for it; but the account of it lies in the mystery of our sensual nature, in the ultimate animal that we are.  The savage joy that is being expressed by the participants in such scenes is ultimately a sensual joy.  These men who delighted in the torture of our Lord were sensualists; and there are few of us who if we will watch our selves closely will not find traces of the animal showing itself from time to time.  Of this crowd about the Cross relatively few could have known anything about the case of our Lord; but they were fascinated by the spectacle of a man’s torture.  If the executions of criminals were public to-day there would undoubtedly be huge crowds to gaze upon them.

It is one of the lessons we learn from the study of sin that what we had thought was the essence of the sin was in fact but one of the manifestations of it, and that we have to carry our study far before we arrive at the ideal, Know thyself.  It is always dangerous to assume that we know when we have not been at the pains to look at a subject on all sides.  Our sensual nature needs a very careful discipline, and the mere freedom from certain forms of the sin of lust is not the equivalent of that purity which is the medium of the Vision of God.