s are best centred upon the
finding and knowing and loving of Jesus Christ within our own
hearts. When this finding, knowing, loving and believing has been
accomplished, then we shall have accomplished the only work God
asks us to accomplish, and all other works will automatically,
peacefully, and smoothly come to their proper fruition in us through
Him.

Neither imagine we shall do this finding of Jesus in, or because of,
another person. We shall not find Him in another person or
anywhere till we have first found Him in ourselves: and this by
inward pondering, delicate tender thinkings, loving comparisons,
sweet enthusiasms, persistent endeavours to imitate His gentle ways
and manners as being some proof of our desire to love and find Him.
The need which is the most pressing of all our needs is to find that
Light which will light us when we have to go out from the light of
this world into the awful solitudes of that which we often so lightly
and confidently speak of as "the other world."

Without Christ we go out into a fearful loneliness: with Christ we
walk the rainbow paths of Paradise.

* * *

Having tasted the blissful wonders of God, nothing less than God
Himself can satisfy, comfort, or fill either the soul, heart, or mind;
and yet we are still in a too small and imperfect condition to endure
the power and strength of God's bliss for more than brief spells, so
that after coming to these high things our portion here is to learn to
be a useful willing servant, carrying with as cheerful a face as we are
able the burden of life in the flesh, and endure this waiting to be
with Christ free of the flesh.

What are these blisses of God? They are contact with an
immeasurable Ardour, they are our ardour meeting the Fountain of
all Ardours: and God is communicated to us by a magnetism which
in its higher degrees becomes luminous and unbearable.

Are these divine joys and comforts of God towards us because we
are more loved by God, because our salvation is more sure than that
of those who are without these comforts? Most emphatically no. It is
because we obey a particular and subtle law of giving to God, and
do not (as is more natural to us) content ourselves with merely
believing, expecting, and hoping to receive _from_ God.

Let us pray more frequently than we do: "My Lord, increase my
faith, increase my love, and increase my understanding of how to
use this faith and this love when they have been begotten in me