f the garden. God will not let any of us
stay where we are, and yet the growth and progress must be our own. We
may delay it and hamper it, but we yet may dare to hope that through
experiences we cannot imagine, through existences we cannot foresee,
that little seed may grow into a branching tree, and fill the garden
with shade and fragrance.

But if we are indeed desirous to do better, to grow in grace, and yet
feel ourselves terribly weak and light-minded, what practical steps can
we take to the goal that we see far off? The one thing that we can do
in moments of insight is to undertake some little responsibility which
we shall be ashamed to discard. We can look round our circle, and it
will be strange if we cannot find at least one person whom we can help;
and the best part of assuming such a responsibility is that it tends to
grow and ramify; but in any case there is surely one person whom we can
relieve, or encourage, or listen to, or make happier; if we can find
the strength to come forward, to lead such a one to depend upon us, we
shall have little inclination to desert or play false one whom we have
encouraged to trust us. And thus we can take our first trembling step
out of the mire.

VII

It is an error either to glorify or degrade the body. If we worship it
or pamper it, when it fails us, we are engulfed and buried in its
ruins; if we misuse it, and we can misuse it alike by obeying it and
disregarding it, it becomes our master and tyrant, or it fails us as an
instrument. We must regard it rather as our prison, serving us for
shelter and security, to be kept as fair and wholesome and cleanly as
may be. When we are children, we are hardly conscious of it--or rather
we are hardly conscious of anything else; in youth and maturity we are
perhaps conscious of its joy and strength; but even so we must also at
times be sadly aware that it is indeed the body of our humiliation; we
must be aware of its dishonour, its uncleanly processes, its ugliness
and feebleness, its slothfulness and perversity. There are times when
the soul sighs to think of itself as chained to a sort of brute; it
tugs at its chain, it snaps and growls, it tears and rends us; at
another time it is content and serviceable; at another it grows spent
and faint, and keeps the soul loitering, heart-sick and reluctant, on
its pilgrimage.

But when once we have perceived the truth, that the body is not
ourselves, but the habitation of the s