nger against us on account of
bygones, if we are sincerely seeking to do what is right now. The new
causes which we put in motion now will produce their proper effect as
surely as the old causes did; and thus by inaugurating a new sequence of
good we shall cut off the old sequence of evil. Only, of course, we
cannot expect to bring about the new sequence while continuing to repeat
the old causes, for the fruit must necessarily reproduce the nature of
the seed. Thus we are the masters of the situation, and, whether in this
world or the next, it rests with ourselves either to perpetuate the
evil or to wipe it out and put the good in its place. And it may be
noticed in passing that the great central Christian doctrine is based
upon the most perfect knowledge of this law, and is the practical
application to a profound problem of the deepest psychological science.
But this is a large subject, and cannot be suitably dealt with here.

Much has been written and said on the origin of evil, and a volume might
be filled with the detailed study of the subject; but for all practical
purposes it may be summed up in the one word limitation. For what is the
ultimate cause of all strife, whether public or private, but the notion
that the supply of good is limited? With the bulk of mankind this is a
fixed idea, and they therefore argue that because there is only a
certain limited quantity of good, the share in their possession can be
increased only by correspondingly diminishing some one else's share. Any
one entertaining the same idea, naturally resents the attempt to deprive
him of any portion of this limited quantity; and hence arises the whole
crop of envy, hatred, fraud, and violence, whether between individuals,
classes, or nations. If people only realised the truth that "good" is
not a certain limited quantity, but a stream continuously flowing from
the exhaustless Infinite, and ready to take any direction we choose to
give it, and that each one is able by the action of his own thought to
draw from it indefinitely, the substitution of this new and true idea
for the old and false one of limitation would at one stroke remove all
strife and struggle from the world; every man would find a helper
instead of a competitor in every other, and the very laws of Nature,
which now so often seem to war against us, would be found a ceaseless
source of profit and delight.

"They could not enter into rest because of unbelief," "they limited the