innumerable persons, both great
and insignificant, who looked for the Pearl of Great Price: and not
too many would seem to have found it. Some sought by study, by
intelligence; some by strict and pious attention to outward
ceremonial service; some by a "religious" life; some even by
penance and fasting. Those who found sought with the heart. Those
who sought with careful piety, or with intelligence, found perhaps
faith and submission, but no joy. The Pearl is that which cannot be
described in words. It is the _touch of God Himself upon the soul,_
the Joy of Love.

* * *

The entrance to the land of happiness and peace is through union of
the will to Christ, by love. How can this sense of love be reached?
By centring the wheel of the mind, with its daily spinning thoughts,
upon the Man Jesus, and learning to inwardly see and hold on to the
perfect simplicity and love of Jesus Christ. We can form the habit of
taking Jesus as our heart and mind companion. We are all aware of
the unceasing necessity of the mind to fill itself: we cannot have
_no_ thoughts until we have advanced in the spiritual life to a long
distance. We may well see, in this, one of the provisions made by
God for His own habitation in the mind of man--a habitation too
often hideously usurped by every kind of unworthy substitute. Petty
social interests and occupations, personal animosities, ambitions,
worries, a revolving endless chaos of futilities, known and praised
by too many of us as "a busy life"!--the mind being given
opportunity only at long intervals, and usually at stated and set times,
to dwell upon the thought of God, and the marvellous future of the
human spirit. We are like travellers who, about to start out upon a
great journey, pack their portmanteaus with everything that will be
_perfectly useless to them!_

Now, it is possible to put out and obliterate this chaotic and useless
state of mind, which would appear to be the "natural mind," and to
open ourselves to receive the might and force and the joys and
delights of Christ's Mind. These joys are the Heart of Christ
speaking to the heart of His lover. They are incomparable: beyond
all imagination until we know them; and we receive them and
perceive them and enjoy them as we have largeness and capacity to
contain them. For there is no end. He has ever more to give if we
will be but large enough to receive.

We are too absorbed in the puerile interests and occupations of daily
life. W