Page 419 of 490

There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for

sin, or for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature that

every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be

instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments

lose the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible end

as automatons move. Choice is taken from them, and conscience is

either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give

rebellion its fascination and disobedience its charm. For all

sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are sins of

disobedience. When that high spirit, that morning star of evil,

fell from heaven, it was as a rebel that he fell.