The Newtown bee., 1908-02-28
LITTLE SERMON.
SELF.lNFLICTED EVIL.-BY 0. O.
 WRIGHT.

Your iniquities have turned away
 these things, and your sins have with
 holden good from you. ."-Jer. 5:25.
 The evils of this life are generally
 speaking, self-inficted. That is, they
 are not sent upon us in any arbitrary
 manner or spirit, but we bring then
 upon ourselves as the just and natural
 penalty of our own self-will, or igno'
 rance. It is true that the law of he.
 redity visits the sins of the fathers up
 on their children for several genera tions. It is also true that directly, or
 indirectly the innocent suffer with and
 for the guilty. But in the long run the results of all the divine laws are
 benificent. The infinite goodness is transeendant, and God the Father will show mercy unto thousands of gene'- ations in them that love and obey Him. Even the penalties of the law are rooted and grounded in the eternal love and punishment is inflicted not to in- jure US, or to make us unhappy, but to correct, chasten, and turn us into the way of righteousness.
 Evil is sent upon us only in that sense that the righteousness of God is self acting in the nature of things. It is not in hatred or revenge that He cor rects us, but to reform us, and save us, and win us to good, by the ministry of suffering if it must be so. All laws are Gods laws, and therefore all the penalties of transgression are surely Gods visitations. And if we humbly submit ourselves to His will every ex- perience of evil will truly lead us on the way to everlasting life and hap piness. The highest significance of life is not so much in the experiences we may have as in the spirit in which we meet them, and the effect they leave upon us.
 The most essential thing in life is to do the will of God. His will is su- preme. We cannot defeat it, we can not evade it. We may choose it; obey it; and love it; or we may deny it; oppose, and hate it. But we cannot be indifferent and ignore it, for in ev- cry act of life we are involved in its sovereign power which is the life of all being, and the estate of everything that is. Gods.is all and in all, and without Him there is nothing.
 | Now all sin is against God; and all unrighteousness is sin. We cannot do wrong without placing ourselves in opposition to the eternal, unchange able Nature. The transgression of the perfect law of the divine nature re- verses its effect upon us. The abuse of the good is evil to us as it is to God. He does not hate us, personally, but in the very nature of things He does hate the evil. It is opposed to Him; it perverts the good He meant for us; it is false and inferior; it dishonors Him because it degrades and at last destroys His image in us. God could not be good, true Father to us if He did not hate evil and punish sin.
 It is our iniquities that turn away the richest blessings of this present life from us, and make us miserable, and it is our sins which withhold the greatest good of eternal life in which | He would have us to rejoice always. We persist in our little, schemes, to .he intolerance of our own progress n real spiritual attainments. We pray and receive not because we ask what God cannot give us save to our ,wn hurt. In our ignorance we do that which can but end in our confusion and lefeat, and then wonder and complain against the Holy One, who can only pity us. We live in chronic disappoint- nent because we force ourselves out ,f harmony with the Spirit of Truth.
 We have made up our minds as to what we will have, and we are not hon. ,st when we say: "Thy will be done" ,r perhaps we are not willing even to ay, the Lords prayer of child-like sub- mission. Trouble and perplexity do lot come without their causes, Dis ease and death; drought and famine; var and calamity: social corruption md moral degeneration, and every orm of evil may be traced to the ,,; ,l> oJnoce of ,,on