and destroy; probably there are none so malevolent that they do not
cherish some kindly impulses and perform some generous deeds. It is a
distinction between acts, or perhaps between tendencies of character,
that He is making. He speaks in the concrete, as He always does; but
He expects us to make the proper application of His words. The fact to
which He guides our thought is this--that there are ways of living,
forms of conduct, which are predatory and destructive of life, and
other ways that tend to make life increase and abound. When Jesus
contrasts His own conduct, as one who gives life and gives it
abundantly, with the thieves and robbers who kill and destroy, we must
interpret the conduct of those whom He describes as destructive of
life--as tending to the diminution of life. Indeed, it is a very deep
and awful truth that all our social action tends in one or other of
these directions. Life, in its proper relation, is the one supreme and
central good; the life of the body is the supreme good of the body;
the life of the spirit is the supreme good of the spirit. And you can
rightly estimate any act or habit or tendency of human conduct only by
determining whether it increases and invigorates the life of men, body
and spirit, or whether it reduces or diminishes their life. Good men
are adding to the life of those with whom they have to do; evil men
are debilitating and depleting the life of those with whom they have
to do.

Even in our economic relations the final effect of all our conduct
upon those with whom we deal is to replenish or diminish their life.
The wage question is at bottom a question of more or less life for the
wage-worker. Starvation wages are wages by which the hold upon life
of the wage-earner and his wife and children is weakened. Systems of
industry are good in proportion as they enlarge and invigorate the
life of the whole population; evil in proportion as they lessen and