e make of these endless occupations a virtue. They are no
virtue, but a deadly hindrance, for they keep us too busy to look for
the one thing needful--the Kingdom of God. What is this world? It is
a schoolhouse for lovers, and we are lovers in the making.

Is baptism of itself sufficient to get us into this Kingdom? No. Is the
leading of an orderly social life sufficient to find it? No. Is the hope,
even the earnest expectation, that we shall, by some means or other
(we do not know by what!), be brought to it, sufficient to find it? No;
not without the _personal laying hold_ can we ever achieve it. Shall
we find it in much outward study? No; and our aim is, not to be the
student but the possessor; and the key to this possession is not in
books, but, for us, in Jesus. He it is who must be invited and
admitted into the heart with great tenderness--with all those virtues
for which He stands--and made the centre point of thought. Out of
constant thought grows tenderness; out of tenderness, affection; out
of affection, love. Love once firmly fixed in the heart for Jesus, we
get a perception (by contrast) of our own faults--very painful, and
known as repentance. This should be succeeded at once by change
of mind, _i.e._ we try to push out the old way of thinking and acting
and take on a new way. We try, in fact, strenuously to please the
Beloved, to be in harmony with Him; and now we have established a
personal relationship between ourselves and Christ.

With the perception of our own failings comes the necessary
humility and the drastic elimination of all prides. We remember, too,
that although Jesus is so near to us, and our own Beloved, He is also
the mighty Son of God.

He is also the mystical Christ, who, when we are ready, leads us to
the Father: which is to say, that we are suddenly stricken with the
consciousness of and the love for God; and here we enter that most
wonderful of all earthly experiences--the Soul's great Garden of
Happiness.

To be a student of theories, dogmas, laws, and writings of men is to
be involved in endless controversy; and we may study books till we
are sick, and embrace nothing but vapour for all our pains. To be a
pupil and possessor we must first establish the personal relationship
between ourselves and Jesus. To do this we must realise more fully
than we now do that He _still lives._ The mind is inclined to dwell
on Him mostly as _having lived._ When we have taught ourselves to
realis