selfish motive. Here again practical psychology sustains me. You cannot
so much as raise your hand without an intention to promote your
happiness--nor are you less selfish if you give your all to the
needy--you are still equally doing that which promotes your happiness.
That it is more blessed to give than to receive is a terse statement of
a law scientifically demonstrable. You all know how far more exquisite
is the pleasure that comes from giving than that which comes from
receiving. Is not one who prefers to give then simply selfish with a
greater wisdom, a finer skill for the result desired--his own pleasure?
The man we call good is not less selfish than the man we call bad--only
wiser in the ways that bring his happiness--riper in that divine
sensitiveness to the feelings of his brother. Selfish happiness is
equally a law with all, though it send one of us to thieving and another
to the cross.

"Ignorance of this primary truth has kept the world in spiritual
darkness--it has nurtured belief in sin--in a devil, in a God that
permits evil. For when you tell me that my assertion is a mere
quibble--that it matters not whether we call a man unselfish or wisely
selfish--you fail to see that, when we understand this truth, there is
no longer any sin. 'Sin' is then seen to be but a mistaken notion of
what brings happiness. Last night's burglar and your bishop differ not
morally but intellectually--one knowing surer ways of achieving his own
happiness, being more sensitive to that oneness of the race which
thrills us all in varying degrees. When you know this--that the
difference is not moral but intellectual, self-righteousness disappears
and with it a belief in moral difference--the last obstacle to the
realisation of our oneness. It is in the church that this fiction of
moral difference has taken its final stand.