er outside of him. And here lies the deepest danger of
all, that a man should attempt to limit or define his conception of the
Power that originated him, by his own preferences. The deepest mystery
of all lies in the conviction, which seems to be inextricably rooted in
the human spirit, namely, the instinct to distinguish between the
impulses which we believe emanate from God, and the impulses which we
believe emanate from ourselves. It is incontestable that the greater
part of the human race have the instinct that in following beneficent,
unselfish, noble impulses they are following the will of their Maker;
but that in yielding to cruel, sensual, low impulses they are acting
contrary to the will of the Creator. And this intuition is one which
many of us do not doubt, though it is a principle, which cannot be
scientifically proved. Indeed, it is incontestable that, though we
believe the will of God to be on the side of what is good, yet He puts
many obstacles, or permits them to be put, in the way of the man who
desires to act rightly.

The only way, I believe, in this last region, in which we can hope to
improve, to win victories, is the way of a quiet and sincere
submission. It is easy to submit to the Will of God when it sends us
joy and peace, when it makes us courageous, high-hearted, and just. The
difficulty is to acquiesce when He sends us adversity, ill-health,
suffering; when He permits us to sin, or if that is a faithless phrase,
does not grant us strength to resist. But we must try to be patient, we
must try to interpret the value of suffering, the meaning of failure,
the significance of shame. Perhaps it may be urged that this too is a
temptation of egotism in another guise, and that we grow thus to
conceive of ourselves as filling too large a space in the mind of God.
But unless we do this, we can only conceive of ourselves as the victims
of God's inattention or neglect, which is a wholly despairing thought.

In one sense we must be egotistic, if self-knowledge is egotism. We
must try to take the measure of our faculties, and we must try to use
them. But while we must wisely humiliate ourselves before the majesty
of God, the vast and profound scheme of the Universe, we must at the
same time believe that we have our place and our work; that God indeed
purposely set us where we find ourselves; and among the complicated
difficulties of sense, of temptation, of unhappiness, of failure, we
must try to fix our e