d the profits of a speculation as he will. God takes no heed of
savings nor of abstinence. He recognises no right to the "rewards of
abstinence," no right to any rewards. Those profits and comforts and
consolations are the inducements that dangle before the eyes of the
spiritually blind. Wealth is an embarrassment to the religious, for God
calls them to account for it. The servant of God has no business with
wealth or power except to use them immediately in the service of God.
Finding these things in his hands he is bound to administer them in the
service of God.

The tendency of modern religion goes far beyond the alleged communism
of the early Christians, and far beyond the tithes of the scribes and
Pharisees. God takes all. He takes you, blood and bones and house and
acres, he takes skill and influence and expectations. For all the rest
of your life you are nothing but God's agent. If you are not prepared
for so complete a surrender, then you are infinitely remote from God.
You must go your way. Here you are merely a curious interloper. Perhaps
you have been desiring God as an experience, or coveting him as
a possession. You have not begun to understand. This that we are
discussing in this book is as yet nothing for you.

7. ADJUSTING LIFE

This picturing of a human world more to the mind of God than this
present world and the discovery and realisation of one's own place and
work in and for that kingdom of God, is the natural next phase in the
development of the believer. He will set about revising and adjusting
his scheme of life, his ways of living, his habits and his relationships
in the light of his new convictions.

Most men and women who come to God will have already a certain
righteousness in their lives; these things happen like a thunderclap
only in strange exceptional cases, and the same movements of the mind
that have brought them to God will already have brought their lives into
a certain rightness of direction and conduct. Yet occasionally there
will be someone to whom the self-examination that follows conversion
will reveal an entirely wrong and evil way of living. It may be that the
light has come to some rich idler doing nothing but follow a pleasurable
routine. Or to someone following some highly profitable and amusing,
but socially useless or socially mischievous occupation. One may be an
advocate at the disposal of any man's purpose, or an actor or actress
ready to fall in with any theatr