the creature, revealing to it its own
smallness and vanity and its own extraordinary ineffectiveness of
self-control, its puny powers over itself: nothing short of an absolute
self-conquest is aimed at and demanded by this inward monitor--the
Soul. With what profound veneration for and recognition of the
power of God does the regenerated creature think of those
alterations in its own nature which, after long strivings, are
eventually given it by God, and of those alterations not yet stabilised
because not yet gifts, but only on the way to perhaps becoming
gifts--that is to say, still only where the power of the creature itself
has been able to raise them: for of these last it may invariably be said
that to-day we may feel serene security and to-morrow fall and fail--and
this in the very meanest way!

We see on every side men and women who try to fill an emptiness, a
wanting that they feel within themselves, by every sort of means
except the only one which can ever be a permanent success. Women
devote themselves to lovers, husbands, children, dress, society, and
dogs; men to business, ambition, the racecourse, folly, drink, games,
and arts. Are any of these persons truly happy, truly satisfied in all
their being? No, and they descend to old age surrounded by the dust
of disillusionment. Lonely and soon forgotten by the hungry
pleasure-seeking crowd, such persons pass from this world, and the
most their friends have to say is that they have gone to a better one.
But have they? For the mere fact of shedding the flesh does not
bring us any nearer to God. On the contrary, the shedding of the
flesh increases appallingly the difficulty of the soul in finding God.
This world is the very place in which we can most easily and
quickly get into communication with God. To think that the mere act
of dying improves our character and takes us to heaven is a delusion
of the Enemy--it is living here which can fit us and carry us to
heaven; and we have no great distance to travel either, for heaven is
a state of consciousness, and by entering that state of consciousness
we become united and connected with such degrees of heaven as the
flesh is able to bear, though these degrees fall infinitely short of
those required by the soul: hence the fearful hungering and longing
of the soul to depart from the flesh. If we do not find Christ whilst
we are here, when we cast off the flesh we enter a bewildering
vortex of a life of terrible intensit