Is it not written in the pilgrim's scrip, "Without labour we are not on the way to rest, and without fighting we come not to victory"? (De Imitatione, Book iii. chap. 19). And when the Master whispers: "Ye are they that have continued with Me in My temptations " (Luke xvii. 28), the touch of sympathy communicated in that intimate utterance stirs to fresh hope. If the very Christ speaks to us so, in the inner chamber of the soul, at first hand, our soul responds in willing service. This is the twentieth-century venture of faith. To believe in the immediate guidance of the Christ walking with us, with no theological pedant to misinterpret, and no "director "-to misdirect. "Come unto Me," He cries; not, "Go to the priest; " not, Obey the Church; not "Recite this creed." And in spite of all the orthodoxies that obscure, and all the philosophies that retard, faith is reborn in the personal obedience to the personal call.

"Whoso has felt the spirit of the Highest,
Cannot confound nor doubt Him, nor deny.
Yea with one voice, O world, though thou deniest,
Stand thou on that side, for on this am I."

"If I stoop,

Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud,

It is but for a time; I press God's lamp
Close to my breast; its splendour, soon or late,
Will pierce the gloom: I shall emerge one day.

A

CHAPTER XIV

Spiritual Laws

"Religion is not philosophy but law.”—HOBBES.

LTHOUGH in the spiritual world, as in the natural, the wind bloweth where it listeth; yet also as in the natural world, so in the spiritual, do events follow causes in sequence. The existence of law in the spiritual world is as true as in the outward universe, and he who would win a knowledge of those spiritual laws may progress thereto by the processes of observation and generalisation, of induction and analysis, similar to those which have led to the discovery of natural laws. But for even the beginning of this he must possess one fundamental faculty-the faculty of spiritual discernment. Without this, of what use were it for him to compare spiritual things with spiritual? If there be any relation between them, if any law uniting or controlling them, how shall he discover that law without spiritual insight? It is not given to every man to discover spiritual laws: it is not given to every man even to understand them when they shall have been discovered by others. Even natural philosophy is not understood by all men who have eyes to see. But that does

not prove that there are no laws of nature in the physical world. Nor does the inability of some good men to see or understand the laws of the spirit demonstrate that there are no such laws, or that they cannot be discovered.

This chapter makes no pretence to expound any completed system. Its aim is much simpler: to state a few of the discoverable laws, such at any rate as are of immediate importance in determining the course a man should steer and in framing any edifice of religious thought. The builder who ignores the laws of nature in his work builds foolishly, and his folly descends upon his own head. He who would be of constructive service in the Church of Christ must acquaint himself with spiritual laws else he is guilty of like folly. And for this end a few simple principles well understood and practised, are better than an encyclopædia of spiritual philosophy.

I. THE LAW OF DESTINY.-By this is meant that in the Providence of God acts bring their own consequences, and that God does not intervene arbitrarily to alter those consequences. This principle of spiritual determinism does not mean that God cannot-He being Omnipotent-intervene to prevent causes from producing their effects: it simply states, as the clear inference from observation, that He does not. If the tree fall toward the south or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth there it shall be. The moving finger writes-and, having writ, moves on. Time is never rolled back for us. It were impiety to say that an Almighty God cannot put back the hands of the clock of time, cannot give us our lives, or any

portion of them, to be lived over again. Do we not, every one of us, recall some sad episode of our lives, which we would fain undo, that we might redo it in a better and nobler way? But by no prayers, by no miracle, does God ever allow this. The past is past; He will not recall it. He will not undo it for us. He will not relieve us of it. He may in His mercy blot it out from the handwriting that is against us; but His infinite forgiveness does not undo the deed that was done. Who shall dare to say that the Infinite God cannot or will not pardon the criminal, even the murderer or the seducer? But even so, he does not undo the crime and bring the dead man back into existence or restore to pristine flower of life the betrayed victim. We may in the goodness of God-be "saved from sin," be "forgiven"; but we are not savedand this is equally in the goodness of God-from the consequences of our sin. Our deed is, in its consequences, inescapable. It enters into our destiny. Our characters, for good or evil, are being moulded day by day by our own deeds; yes, and by our own thoughts too. Not only for every evil deed, and for every idle word but for every base thought too, must we render account in the day of the crisis, that day of judgment which for many men is now and here, as their ill-deeds, their ungoverned tempers, their unseen vices, are writing themselves openly upon their faces and distorting their characters. This is how men's sins go in front of them-on their foreheads -to judgment, and pursue them to their dying day. We have in this life to work out not only our own salvation, but our own damnation, too.

For this is damnation-that light is come into the world and the men whose deeds were evil and who have loved darkness, find the light of day revealing abroad the destiny that is closing in upon them in all its ugliness. Not even "the gods," thought the old Greek poet, can fight against destiny. Destiny? It is assuredly part of the ways of God with men inescapable destiny.

II. THE LAW OF CONTINUITY.-This law comprises as a general principle the acceptance of that inherent reasonableness of the universe of God without which all thought of Him and of His ways would be in vain. God is not unreasonable, nor are His works. God is, as St. Paul put it (1 Cor. xiv. 33), not the author of confusion. Nor will He put us to confusion in our turn. Men do not gather grapes of thorns. To every seed there is its own kind of body. Day follows day, and the stars turn in their appointed courses. To think otherwise were confusion indeed. But the recognition of the principle of continuity carries us a great deal farther, particularly if once we accept the universal truth that in Him we live and move and have our being. For then the recognition of continuity, the reality and reasonableness of the inherent significance of things, will save us from pessimism, from the nihilism of thought, which regards this present world as purposeless and the race of men as devoid of destiny. If all things continue literally as they were from the foundation of the world—if there be no development, no progress, no aim, no destinyif the journey of man from the cradle to the grave be a mere vanity, and if the march of successive generations bring them no nearer to an ultimate