- gratification, in whatever plane, is in the broad road
which leads to antagonism and death. "His lusts, when they conceive, bring forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death."
There is no middle ground between love and lust; and unless the distinction be taken where I have taken it, it can not be taken at all. Excuse the principle of seeking after gratification as a true incentive to action, and you have destroyed the distinction between purity and impurity—between truth and falsehood—between holiness and sin. If action in respect to use and the gratification of self be the highest, then, indeed, there is no God—no virtue—no right. Such is the ultimate conclusion of those who know of no higher rule of action than pertains to the sphere of use and gratification. They know of no intrinsic virtue, goodness, purity, etc. They affirm of existence the qualities of good or bad from results. They say that a thing is right or wrong because the result is wrong, and not that the result was wrong because the thing itself was intrinsically bad.
This is a very common error with the world. They are apt to trace the evil in the result and overlook it in the cause. The reason that lustful action is pernicious is not because its results are bad, but because the condition itself is intrinsically false, and can not produce other than false fruit.
We sum up in this. Man will never feel the need of that which he does not lack. He will never feel the need of happiness or gratification so long as every demand of his nature is gratified; because the compliance with every demand of his being will of itself
