amming the door in Satan's face, and
opening it wider for Jesus' control. Listen with your heart! An act of
disobedience, however slight, as _you_ think, is slamming the door of
your heart in Jesus' face and flinging it open to Satan's entrance. Is
that mere rhetoric? It is cold fact. No, it is hot fact. The first great
simple law is obedience.

But someone asks, "How shall I know what--whom, to obey? Sometimes the
voices coming to my ear seem to be jarring voices; they do not agree.
Pastors do not all agree: churches are not quite agreed on some matters:
my best friends think differently: how shall I know?" Here comes in _the
second law_, _Obey the book of God as interpreted by the Spirit of God_.
Not the book alone. That will lead into superstition. Not to say the
Spirit without the book He has indited. That will lead to fanaticism.
But the book as interpreted by the Spirit, and the Spirit as He speaks
through His book. There is a voice of God, and a Spirit of God and a
book of God. God speaks by His Spirit through His word Sometimes He
speaks directly without the written word. But _very, very rarely_. The
mental impressions by which the Spirit guides are frequent. But I am
speaking now, not of that but of His audible inner voice. He is chary in
the use of that. And when he so speaks the _test_ is that, of necessity,
the voice of God always agrees with itself. The spoken word is never out
of harmony with the written word. And as He has given us the written
word, it becomes our standard of His will. This book of God was
inspired. It _is_ inspired. God spoke in it. He speaks in it to-day. You
will be surprised to find how light on every sort of question will come
through this in-Spirited book.

But someone with a practical turn of mind is thinking: "but it is such a
big book. I do not know much about it. I read the psalms some, and some
chapters in Isaiah, and the gospels and some in the epistles, but I have
no grasp of the whole book; and your second law seems a little beyond
me." Then _you_ listen to the third law, namely: _time alone with the
book daily_. It should be unhurried time. Time enough not to think about
time. At least a half hour every day, I would suggest, and preferably
the first half hour of the morning, rising at least early enough to get
this bit of time before any duty can claim you. It may seem very
difficult for some. But it is an absolute essential, for the first two
laws depend on this one for t