no margin about God's work, no room for change of plan upon change of fact-yea, even the mighty change that.. . now at length His child is praying! ... I may move my arm as I please: shall God be unable so to move His? [ 98 ] Providence If His machine interfered with His answering the prayer of a single child, He would sweep it from Him- not to bring back chaos but to make room for His child.. .. We must remember that God is not occupied with a grand toy of worlds and suns and planets, of attractions and repulsions, of agglomerations and crystallizations, of forces and waves; that these but constitute a portion of His workshops and tools for the bringing out of righteous men and women to fill His house of love withal [ 99 ] The Miracles of Our Lord In all His miracles Jesus did only in miniature what His Father does ever in the great. Poor, indeed, was the making of the wine in the ... pots of stone, compared with its making in the lovely growth of the vine with its clusters of swelling grapes-the live roots gathering from the earth the water that had to be borne in pitchers and poured into the great vases; but it is precious as the interpreter of the same, even in its being the outcome of Our Lord's sympathy with ordinary human rejoicing. [ 100 ] They Have No Wine (John 2:3) At the prayer of His mother, He made room in His plans for the thing she desired. It was not His wish then to work a miracle, but if His mother wished it, He would. He did for His mother what for His own part He would rather have left alone. Not always did He do as His mother would have Him; but this was a case in which He could do so, for it would interfere nowise with the will of His Father. . . . The Son, then, could change His intent and spoil nothing: so, I say, can the Father; for the Son does nothing but what He sees the Father do. [ 101 ] Intercessory Prayer And why should the good of anyone depend on the prayer of another? I can only answer with the return question, "Why should my love be powerless to help another?" [ 102 ] The Eternal Revolt There is endless room for rebellion against ourselves. [ IO3 ] They Say It Does Them Good There are those even who, not believing in any ear to hear, any heart to answer, will yet pray. They say it does them good; they pray to nothing at all, but they get spiritual benefit. I will not contradict their testimony. So needful is prayer to the soul that the mere attitude of it may encourage a good mood. Verily to pray to that which is not, is in logic a folly: yet the good that, they say, comes of it, may rebuke the worse folly of their unbelief, for it indicates that prayer is natural, and how could it be natural if inconsistent with the very mode of our being? [ 104 ] Perfected Prayer And there is a communion with God that asks for nothing, yet asks for everything. . . . He who seeks the Father more than anything He can give, is likely to have what he asks, for he is not likely to ask amiss. [ 105 ] Corrective Granting Even such as ask amiss may sometimes have their prayers answered. The Father will never give the child a stone that asks for bread; but I am not sure that He will never give the child a stone that asks for a stone. If the Father says, "My child, that is a stone; it is no bread," and the child answer, "I am sure it is bread; I want it," may it not be well that he should try his "bread"? [ 106 ] Why We Must Wait Perhaps, indeed, the better the gift we pray for, the more time is necessary for its arrival. To give us the spiritual gift we desire, God may have to begin far back in our spirit, in regions unknown to us, and do much work that we can be aware of only in the results; for our consciousness is to the extent of our being but as the flame of the volcano to the world-gulf whence it issues; in the gulf of our unknown being God works behind our consciousness. With His holy influence, with His own presence (the one thing for which most earnestly we cry) He may be approaching our consciousness from behind, coming forward through regions of our darkness into our light, long before we begin to be aware that He is answering our request-has answered it, and is visiting His child. [ 107 ] God's Vengeance "Vengeance is mine," He says: with a right understanding of it, we might as well pray for God's vengeance as for His forgiveness; that vengeance is, to destroy the sin -to make the sinner abjure and hate it; nor is there any satisfaction in a vengeance that seeks or effects less. The man himself must turn against himself, and so be for himself. If nothing else will do, then hellfire; if less will do, whatever brings repentance and self-repudiation, is God's repayment. Friends, if any prayers are offered against us; if the vengeance of God be cried out for, because of some wrong you or I have done, God grant us His vengeance! Let us not think that we shall get off! [ 108 ] The Way of Understanding He who does that which he sees, shall understand; he who is set upon understanding rather than doing, shall go on stumbling and mistaking and speaking foolishness. ... It is he that runneth that shall read, and no other. It is not intended by the Speaker of the Parables that any other should know intellectually what, known but intellectually, would be for his injury-what, knowing intellectually, he would imagine he had grasped, perhaps even appropriated. When the pilgrim of the truth comes on his journey to the region of the parable, he finds its interpretation. It is not a fruit or a jewel to be stored, but a well springing by the wayside. [ 109 ] Penal Blindness Those who by insincerity and falsehood close their deeper eyes, shall not be capable of using in the matter the more superficial eyes of their understanding... This will help to remove the difficulty that the parables are plainly for the teaching of the truth, and yet the Lord speaks of them as for the concealing of it. They are for the understanding of that man only who is practical- who does the thing he knows, who seeks to understand vitally. They reveal to the live conscience, otherwise not to the keenest intellect. [ 110 ] The Same The former are content to have the light cast upon their way: the latter will have it in their eyes and cannot; if they had, it would blind them. For them to know more would be their worse condemnation. They are not fit to know more, more shall not be given them yet.... "You choose the dark; you shall stay in the dark till the terrors that dwell in the dark affray you, and cause you to cry out." God puts a seal upon the will of man; that seal is either His great punishment or His mighty favor: "Ye love the darkness, abide in the darkness": "O woman great is thy faith: be it done unto thee even as thou wilt!" [ 111 ] Agree with the Adversary Quickly Arrange what claim lies against you; compulsion waits behind it. Do at once what you must do one day. As there is no escape from payment, escape at least the prison that will enforce it. Do not drive justice to extremities. Duty is imperative; it must be done. It is useless to think to escape the eternal law of things: yield of yourself, nor compel God to compel you. [ 112 ] The Inexorable No, there is no escape. There is no heaven with a little of hell in it-no plan to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather! [ 113 ] Christ Our Righteousness Christ is our righteousness, not that we should escape punishment, still less escape being righteous, but as the live potent creator of righteousness in us, so that we, with our wills receiving His spirit, shall like Him resist unto blood, striving against sin. [ 114 ] Agree Quickly Arrange your matters with those who have anything against you, while you are yet together and things have not gone too far to be arranged; you will have to do it, and that under less easy circumstances than now. Putting off is of no use. You must. The thing has to be done; there are means of compelling you. [ 115 ] Duties to an Enemy It is a very small matter to you whether the man give you your right or not: it is life or death to you whether or not you give him his. Whether he pay you what you count his debt or no, you will be compelled to pay him all you owe him. If you owe him a pound and he you a million, you must pay him the pound whether he pay you the million or not; there is no business parallel here. If, owing you love, he gives you hate, you, owing him love, have yet to pay it. [ 116 ] The Prison I think I have seen from afar something of the final prison of all, the innermost cell of the debtor of the universe. ... It is the vast outside; the ghastly dark beyond the gates of the city of which God is the light- where the evil dogs go ranging, silent as the dark, for there is no sound any more than sight. The time of signs is over. Every sense has (had) its signs, and they were all misused: there is no sense, no sign more-nothing now by means of which to believe. The man wakes from the final struggle of death, in absolute loneliness as in the most miserable moment of deserted childhood he never knew. Not a hint, not a shadow of anything outside his consciousness reaches him. . . . Soon misery will beget on his imagination a thousand shapes of woe, which he will not be able to rule, direct, or even distinguish from real presences. [ 117 ] Not Good to Be Alone In such evil case I believe the man would be glad to come in contact with the worst loathed insect: it would be a shape of life, something beyond and beside his own huge, void, formless being! I imagine some such feeling in the prayer of the devils for leave to go into the swine. . . . Without the correction, the reflection, the support of other presences, being is not merely unsafe, it is a horror-for anyone but God, who is His own being. For him whose idea is God's, and the image of God, his own being is far too fragmentary and imperfect to be anything like good company. It is the lovely creatures God has made all around us, in them giving us Himself, that, until we know Him, save us from the frenzy of aloneness-for that aloneness is self. [ 118 ] Be Ye Perfect Whoever will live must cease to be a slave and become a child of God. There is no halfway house of rest, where ungodliness may be dallied with, nor prove quite fatal Be they few or many cast into such prison as I have endeavored to imagine, there can be no deliverance for human soul, whether in that prison or out of it, but in paying the last farthing, in becoming lowly, penitent, self-refusing-so receiving the sonship and learning to cry, Father! [ 119 ] The Heart And no scripture is of private interpretation, so is there no feeling in (a) human heart which exists in that heart alone-which is not, in some form or degree, in every heart. [ 120 ] Precious Blame No matter how His image may have been defaced in me, the thing defaced is His image, remains His defaced image-an image yet, that can hear His word. What makes me evil and miserable is that the thing spoiled in me is the image of the Perfect. Nothing can be evil but in virtue of a good hypostasis. No, no! Nothing can make it that I am not the child of God. If one say, "Look at the animals: God made them; you do not call them the children of God!" I answer, "But I am to blame: they are not to blame! I cling fast to my blame: it is the seal of my childhood." I have nothing to argue from in the animals, for I do not understand them. Two things I am sure of: that God is "a faithful creator" and that the sooner I put in force my claim to be a child of God, the better for them; for they too are fallen, though without blame. [ 121 ] The Same However bad I may be, I am the child of God, and therein lies my blame. Ah, I would not lose my blame! In my blame lies my hope. [ 122 ] Man Glorified Everything muse at length be subject to man, as it was to The Man. When God can do what He will with a man, the man may do what he will with the world; he may walk on the sea like his Lord; the deadliest thing will not be able to hurt him. [ 123 ] Life in the Word All things were made through the Word, but that which was made in the Word was life, and that life is the light of men: they who live by this light, that is live as Jesus lived, by obedience, namely, to the Father, have a share in their own making; the light becomes life in them; they are, in their lower way, alive with the life that was first born in Jesus, and through Him has been born in them-by obedience they become one with the Godhead: "As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God." [ 124 ] The Office of Christ Never could we have known the heart of the Father, never felt it possible to love Him as sons, but for Him who cast Himself into the gulf that yawned between us. In and through Him we were foreordained to the son-ship: sonship, even had we never sinned, never could we reach without Him. We should have been little children loving the Father indeed, but children far from the son-hood that understands and adores. [ 125 ] The Slowness of the New Creation As the world must be redeemed in a few men to begin with, so the soul is redeemed in a few of its thoughts, and works, and ways to begin with: it takes a long time to finish the new creation of this redemption. [ 126 ] The New Creation When the sons of God show as they are, taking, with the character, the appearance and the place, that belong to their sonship; when the sons of God sit with the Son of God on the throne of their Father; then shall they be in potency of fact the lords of the lower creation, the bestowers of liberty and peace upon it: then shall the creation, subjected to vanity for their sakes, find its freedom in their freedom, its gladness in their sonship. The animals will glory to serve them, will joy to come to them for help. Let the heartless scoff, the unjust despise! the heart that cries Abba, Father, cries to the God of the sparrow and the oxen; nor can hope go too far in hoping what God will do for the creation that now groaneth and travaileth in pain because our higher birth is delayed. [ 127 ] Pessimism Low-sunk life imagines itself weary of life, but it is death, not life, it is weary of. [ 128 ] The Work of the Father All things are possible with God, but all things are not easy. ... In the very nature of being-that is, God- it must be hard-and divine history shows how hard -to create that which shall be not Himself, yet like Himself. The problem is, so far to separate from Himself that which must yet on Him be ever and always and utterly dependent, that it shall have the existence of an individual, and be able to turn and regard him, choose Him, and say "I will arise and go to my Father. ..." I imagine the difficulty of doing this thing, of affecting this creation, this separation from Himself such that Will in the creature shall be possible-I imagine, I say, that for it God must begin inconceivably far back in the infinitesimal regions of beginnings. [ 129 ] The End The final end of the separation is not individuality; that is but a means to it: the final end is oneness-an impossibility without it. For there can be no unity, no delight of love, no harmony, no good in being, where there is but one. Two at least are needed for oneness. [ 130 ] Deadlock Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it. [ 131 ] The Two Worst Heresies The worst heresy, next to that of dividing religion and righteousness, is to divide the Father from the Son; . . . to represent the Son as doing that which the Father does not Himself do. [ 132 ] Christian Growth All the growth of the Christian is the more and more life he is receiving. At first his religion may hardly be distinguishable from the mere prudent desire to save his soul: but at last he loses that very soul in the glory of love, and so saves itself; self becomes but the cloud on which the white light of God divides into harmonies unspeakable. [ 133 ] Life and Shadow Life is everything. Many doubtless mistake the joy of life for life itself, and, longing after the joy, languish with a thirst at once poor and inextinguishable; but even that, thirst points to the one spring. These love self, not life, and self is but the shadow of life. When it is taken for life itself, and set as the man's center, it becomes a live death in the man, a devil he worships as his God: the worm of the death eternal he clasps to his bosom as his one joy. [ 134 ] False Refuge Of all things let us avoid the false refuge of a weary collapse, a hopeless yielding to things as they are. It is the life in us that is discontented: we need more of what is discontented, not more of the cause of its discontent. [ 135 ] A Silly Notion No silly notion of playing the hero-what have creatures like us to do with heroism who are not yet barely honest? [ 136 ] Dryness The true man trusts in a strength which is not his, and which he does not feel, does not even always desire. [ 137 ] Perseverance To believe in the wide-awake real, through all the stupefying, enervating, distorting dream: to will to wake, when the very being seems athirst for Godless repose:-these are the broken steps up to the high fields where repose is but a form of strength, strength but a form of joy, joy but a form of love. [ 138 ] The Lower Forms I trust that life in its lowest forms is on the way to thought and blessedness, is in the process of that separation, so to speak, from God, in which consists the creation of living souls. [ 139 ] Life He who has it not cannot believe in it: how should death believe in life, though all the birds of God are singing jubilant over the empty tomb? [ 140 ] The Eternal Round Obedience is the joining of the links of the eternal round. Obedience is but the other side of the creative will. Will is God's will, obedience is man's will; the two make one. The root life, knowing well the thousand troubles it would bring upon Him, has created, and goes on creating, other lives, that though incapable of self-being they may, by willed obedience, share in the bliss of His essential self-ordained being. If we do the will of God, eternal life is ours-no mere continuity of existence, for that in itself is worthless as hell, but a being that is one with the essential life. [ 141 ] The Great One Life The infinite God, the great one life, than whom is no other-only shadows, lovely shadows of Him. [ 142 ] The Beginning of Wisdom Naturally the first emotion of man toward the being he calls God, but of whom he knows so little, is fear. Where it is possible that fear should exist, it is well it should exist, cause continual uneasiness, and be cast out by nothing less than love. . . . Until love, which is the truth toward God, is able to cast out far, it is well that fear should hold; it is a bond, however poor, between that which is and That which creates-a bond that must be broken, but a bond that can be broken only by the tightening of an infinitely closer bond. Verily God must be terrible to those that are far from Him: for they fear He will do, yea, He is doing with them what they do not, cannot desire, and can ill endure. [ 143 ] "Peace in Our Time" While they are such as they are, there is much in Him that cannot but affright them: they ought, they do well, to fear, Him. ... To remove that fear from their hearts, save by letting them know His love with its purifying fire, a love which for ages, it may be, they cannot know, would be to give them up utterly to the power of evil. Persuade men that fear is a vile thing, that it is an insult to God, that He will none of it-while they are yet in love with their own will, and slaves to every movement of passionate impulse, and what will the consequence be? That they will insult God as a discarded idol, a superstition, a falsehood, as a thing under whose evil influence they have too long groaned, a thing to be cast out and spit upon. After that how much will they learn of Him? [ 144 ] Divine Fire The fire of God, which is His essential being, His love, His creative power, is a fire unlike its earthly symbol in this, that it is only at a distance it burns-that the further from Him, it burns the worse. [ 145 ] The Safe Place If then any child of the Father finds that he is afraid before Him, that the thought of God is a discomfort to him, or even a terror, let him make haste-let him not linger to put on any garment, but rush at once in his nakedness, a true child, for shelter from his own evil and God's terror, into the salvation of the Father's arms. [ 146 ] God and Death All that is not God is death. [ 147 ] Terror Endless must be our terror, until we come heart to heart with the fire-core of the universe, the first and the last of the living One. [ 148 ] False Want Men who would rather receive salvation from God than God their salvation. [ 149 ] A Man's Right Lest it should be possible that any unchildlike soul might, in arrogance and ignorance, think to stand upon his rights against God, and demand of Him this or that after the will of the flesh, I will lay before such a possible one some of the things to which he has a right. ... He has a claim to be compelled to repent; to be hedged in on every side: to have one after another of the strong, sharp-toothed sheep dogs of the Great Shepherd sent after him, to thwart him in any desire, foil him in any plan, frustrate him of any hope, until he come to see at length that nothing will ease his pain, nothing make life a thing worth having, but the presence of the living God within him. [ 150 ] Nature In what belongs to the deeper meanings of nature and her mediation between us and God, the appearances of nature are the truths of nature, far deeper than any scientific discoveries in and concerning them. The show of things is that for which God cares most, for their show is the face of far deeper things than they. ... It is through their show, not through their analysis, that we enter into their deepest truths. What they say to the childlike soul is the truest thing to be gathered of them. To know a primrose is a higher thing than to know all the botany of it-just as to know Christ is an infinitely higher thing than to know all theology, all that is said about His person, or babbled about His work. The body of man does not exist for the sake of its hidden secrets; its hidden secrets exist for the sake of its outside-for the face and the form in which dwells revelation: its outside is the deepest of it. So Nature as well exists primarily for her face, her look, her appeals to the heart and the imagination, her simple service to human need, and not for the secrets to be discovered in her and turned to man's further use. [ 151 ] The Same By an infinite decomposition we should know nothing more of what a thing really is, for, the moment we decompose it, it ceases to be, and all its meaning is vanished. Infinitely more than astronomy even, which destroys nothing, can do for us, is done by the mere aspect and changes of the vault over our heads. Think for a moment what would be our idea of greatness, of God, of infinitude, of aspiration, if, instead of a blue, far withdrawn, light-spangled firmament, we were born and reared under a flat white ceiling! I would not be supposed to depreciate the labors of science, but I say its discoveries are unspeakably less precious than the merest gifts of Nature, those which, from morning to night, we take unthinking from her hands. One day, I trust, we shall be able to enter into their secrets from within them-by natural contact. . . . [ 152 ] Doubt To deny the existence of God may . . . involve less unbelief than the smallest yielding to doubt of His goodness. I say yielding; for a man may be haunted with doubts, and only grow thereby in faith. Doubts are the messengers of the Living One to the honest. They are the first knock at our door of things that are not yet, but have to be, understood. . . . Doubt must precede every deeper assurance; for uncertainties are what we first see when we look into a region hitherto unknown, unexplored, unannexed. [ 153 ] Job Seeing God, Job forgets all he wanted to say, all he thought he would say if he could but see Him. [ 154 ] The Close of the Book of Job Job had his desire: he saw the face of God-and abhorred himself in dust and ashes. He sought justification; he found self-abhorrence. . . . Two things are clearly contained in, and manifest from, this poem:- that not every man deserves for his sins to be punished everlastingly from the presence of the Lord; and that the best of men, when he sees the face of God, will know himself vile. God is just, and will never deal with the sinner as if he were capable of sinning the pure sin; yet if the best man be not delivered from himself, that self will sink him into Tophet. [ 155 ] The Way Christ is the way out, and the way in: the way from slavery, conscious or unconscious, into liberty; the way from the unhomeliness of things to the home we desire but do not know; the way from the stormy skirts of the Father's garments to the peace of His bosom. [ 156 ] Self-Control I will allow that the mere effort of will. . . may add to the man's power over his lower nature; but in that very nature it is God who must rule and not the man, how very well he may mean. From a man's rule of himself in smallest opposition, however devout, to the law of his being, arises the huge danger of nourishing, by the pride of self-conquest, a far worse than even the unchained animal self-the demoniac self. True victory over self is the victory of God in the man, not of the man alone. It is not subjugation that is enough, but subjugation by God. In whatever man does without God, he must fail miserably-or succeed more miserably. No portion of a man can rule another, for God, not the man, created it, and the part is greater than the whole. . . . The diseased satisfaction which some minds feel in laying burdens on themselves, is a pampering, little as they may suspect it, of the most dangerous appetite of that self which they think they are mortifying. [ 157 ] Self-Denial The self is given to us that we may sacrifice it: it is ours, that we, like Christ, may have somewhat to offer- not that we should torment it, but that we should deny it; not that we should cross it, but that we should abandon it utterly: then it can no more be vexed. "What can this mean?-we are not to thwart, but to abandon?" ... It means this:-we must refuse, abandon, deny self altogether as a ruling, or determining, or originating element in us. It is to be no longer the regent of our action. We are no more to think "What should I like to do?" but "What would the Living One have me do?" [ 158 ] Killing the Nerve No grasping or seeking, no hungering of the individual, shall give motion to the will: no desire to be conscious of worthiness shall order the life; no ambition whatever shall be a motive of action; no wish to surpass another be allowed a moment's respite from death. [ 159 ] Self Self, I have not to consult you but Him whose idea is the soul of you, and of which as yet you are all unworthy. I have to do, not with you, but with the Source of you, by whom it is that (at) any moment you exist-the Causing of you, not the caused you. You may be my consciousness but you are not my being. ... For God is more to me than my consciousness of myself. He is my life; you are only so much of it as my poor half-made being can grasp-as much of it as I can now know at once. Because I have fooled and spoiled you, treated you as if you were indeed my own self, you have dwindled yourself and have lessened me, till I am ashamed of myself. If I were to mind what you say, I should soon be sick of you; even now I am ever and anon disgusted with your paltry mean face, which I meet at every turn. No! Let me have the company of the Perfect One, not of you! Of my elder brother, the Living One! I will not make a friend of the mere shadow of my own being! Good-bye, Self! I deny you, and will do my best every day to leave you behind. [ 160 ] My Yoke Is Easy The will of the Father is the yoke He would have us take, and bear also with Him. It is of this yoke that he says It is easy, of this burden, // is light. He is not saying "The yoke I lay upon you is easy, the burden light"; what He says is, "The yoke I carry is easy, the burden on My shoulders is light." With the garden of Gethsemane before Him, with the hour and the power of darkness waiting for Him, He declares His yoke is easy, His burden light. [ 161 ] We Must Be Jealous We must be jealous for God against ourselves and look well to the cunning and deceitful self-ever cunning and deceitful until it is informed of God-until it is thoroughly and utterly denied. . . . Until then its very denials, its very turnings from things dear to it for the sake of Christ, will tend to foster its self-regard, and generate in it a yet deeper self-worship. [ 162 ] Facing Both Ways Is there not many a Christian who, having begun to deny himself, yet spends much strength in the vain and evil endeavor to accommodate matters between Christ and the dear Self-seeking to save that which so he must certainly lose-in how different a way from that in which the Master would have him lose it! [ 163 ] The Careless Soul The careless soul receives the Father's gifts as if it were a way things had of dropping into his hand ... yet is he ever complaining, as if someone were accountable for the checks which meet him at every turn. For the good that comes to him, he gives no thanks-who is there to thank? At the disappointments that befall him he grumbles-there must be someone to blame! [ 164 ] There Is No Merit in It In the main we love because we cannot help it. There is no merit in it: how should there be any love? But neither is it selfish. There are many who confound righteousness with merit, and think there is nothing righteous where there is nothing meritorious. "If it makes you happy to love," they say, "where is your merit? It is only selfishness." There is no merit, I reply, yet the love that is born in us is our salvation from selfishness. It is of the very essence of righteousness. ... That certain joys should be joys, is the very denial of selfishness. The man would be a demoniacally selfish man, whom Love itself did not make joyful. [ 165 ] Faith Do you ask, "What is faith in Him?" I answer, The leaving of your way, your objects, your self, and the taking of His and Him; the leaving of your trust in men, in money, in opinion, in character, in atonement itself, and doing as He tells you. I can find no words strong enough to serve for the weight of this obedience. [ 166 ] The Misguided Instead of so knowing Christ that they have Him in them saving them, they lie wasting themselves in soul-sickening self-examination as to whether they are believers, whether they are really trusting in the atonement, whether they are truly sorry for their sins-the way to madness of the brain, and despair of the heart. [ 167 ] The Way Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have this day done one thing because He said, Do it, or once abstained because He said, Do not do it. It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe, in Him, if you do not do anything He tells you. [ 168 ] The First and Second Persons I worship the Son as the human God, the divine, the only, Man, deriving His being and power from the Father, equal with Him as a son is the equal at once and the subject of his father. [ 169 ] Warning We must not wonder things away into nonentity. [ 170 ] Creation The word creation applied to the loftiest success of human genius, seems to me a mockery of humanity, itself in process of creation. [ 171 ] The Unknowable As to what the life of God is to Himself, we can only know that we cannot know it-even that not being absolute ignorance, for no one can see that, from its very nature, he cannot understand a thing without therein approaching that thing in a most genuine manner. [ 172 ] Warning Let us understand very plainly, that a being whose essence was only power would be such a negation of the divine that no righteous worship could be offered him. [ 173 ] The Two First Persons The response to self-existent love is self-abnegating love. The refusal of Himself is that in Jesus which corresponds to the creation in God. . . . When he died on the cross, He did that, in the wild weather of His outlying provinces, in the torture of the body of His revelation, which He had done at home in glory and gladness. [ 174 ] The Imitation of Christ There is no life for any man other than the same kind that Jesus has; His disciples must live by the same absolute devotion of his will to the Father's: then is his life one with the life of the Father. [ 175 ] Pain and Joy The working out of this our salvation must be pain, and the handling of it down to them that are below must ever be in pain; but the eternal form of the will of God in and for us, is intensity of bliss. [ 176 ] "By Him All Things Consist" The bond of the universe ... is the devotion of the Son to the Father. It is the life of the universe. It is not the fact that God created all things, that makes the universe a whole; but that He through Whom He created them loves Him perfectly, is eternally content in His Father, is satisfied to be because His Father is with Him. It is not the fact that God is all in all that unites the universe: it is the love of the Son to the Father. For of no onehood comes unity; there can be no oneness where there is only one. For the very beginnings of unity there must be two. Without Christ therefore there could be no universe. [ 177 ] "In Him Was Life" We too must have life in ourselves. We too must, like the Life Himself, live. We can live in no way but that in which Jesus lived, in which life was made in Him. The way is, to give up our life. . . . Till then we are not alive; life is not made in us. The whole strife and labor and agony of the Son with every man is to get him to die as He died. All preaching that aims not at this is a building with wood, and hay, and stubble. [ 178 ] Why We Have Not Christ's "Ipsissima Verba" God has not cared that we should anywhere have assurance of His very words; and that not merely perhaps, because of the tendency in His children to word-worship, false logic, and corruption of the truth, but because He would not have them oppressed by words, seeing that words, being human, therefore but partially capable, could not absolutely contain or express what the Lord meant, and that even He must depend for being understood upon the spirit of His disciple. Seeing it could not give life, the letter should not be throned with power to kill. [ 179 ] Warning "How am I to know that a thing is true?" By doing what you know to be true, and calling nothing true until you see it to be true; by shutting your mouth until the truth opens it. Are you meant to be silent? Then woe to you if you speak. [ 180 ] On Bad Religious Art If the Lord were to appear this day in England as once in Palestine, He would not come in the halo of the painters or with that wintry shine of effeminate beauty, of sweet weakness, in which it is their helpless custom to represent Him. [ 181 ] Row to Read the Epistles The uncertainty lies always in the intellectual region, never in the practical. What Paul cares about is plain enough to the true heart, however far from plain to the man whose desire to understand goes ahead of his obedience. [ 182 ] The Entrance of Christ When we receive His image into our spiritual mirror, He enters with it. Our thought is not cut off from His. Our open receiving thought is His door to come in. When our hearts turn to Him, that is opening the door to Him, that is holding up our mirror to Him; then He comes in, not by our thought only, not in our idea only, but He comes Himself and of His own will-comes in as we could not take Him, but as He can come. [ 183 ] The Same Thus the Lord ... becomes the soul of our souls, becomes spiritually what He always was creatively; and as our spirit informs, gives shape to, our bodies, in like manner His soul informs, gives shape to, our souls. The deeper soul that willed and wills our souls rises up, the infinite Life, into the Self we call 7 and me, but which lives immediately from Him and is His very own property and nature-unspeakably more His than ours . . . until at length the glory of our existence flashes upon us, we face full to the sun that enlightens what it sent forth, and know ourselves alive with an infinite life, even the Life of the Father; know that our existence is not the moonlight of a mere consciousness of being but the sun-glory of a life justified by having become one with its origin, thinking and feeling with the primal Sun of life, from whom it was dropped away that it might know and bethink itself and return to circle forever in exultant harmony around Him. [ 184 ] The Uses of Nature What notion should we have of the unchanging and unchangeable, without the solidity of matter? . . . How should we imagine what we may of God without the firmament over our heads, a visible sphere, yet a formless infinitude? What idea could we have of God without the sky? [ 185 ] Natural Science Human science is but the backward undoing of the tapestry-web of God's science, works with its back to Him, and is always leaving Him-His intent, that is, His perfected work-behind it, always going farther and farther away from the point where His work culminates in revelation. [ 186 ] The Value of Analysis Analysis is well, as death is well. [ 187 ] Nature The truth of the flower is, not the facts about it, be they correct as ideal science itself, but the shining, glowing, gladdening, patient thing throned on its stalk -the compeller of smile and tear. ... The idea of God is the flower: His idea is not the botany of