." It expresses the fact that in ordinary circumstances, and under
commonplace temptations, we do not succeed in holding life to the
accomplishment which is ours when we are, as it were, on dress parade.
In other words, we respond to the opinions we desire to create in
others; and the spirit of sanctity is a response not to public opinion,
but to the mind and thought of God. When we seek the mind of Christ, and
seek to reproduce that mind in our own lives, seek to be possessed by
it, then we shall gladly render back to God all life's riches which we
have received from Him, and acknowledge in the true spirit of poverty
that "all things come of Thee, O Lord, and of Thine own have we
given Thee."

The world has got into a very ill way of thinking of God as _force_.
Force seems in the popular mind to be the synonym of _power_. The only
power that we understand is the power that _compels_, that secures the
execution of its will by physical or moral constraint. With this
conception of power in mind men are continually asking: "Why does not
God do this or that? If he be God and wills goodness, why does He not
execute goodness, use power to accomplish it?"

It ought to be unnecessary to point out that such a conception of power
is quite foreign to the Christian conception of God. Goodness that is
compulsory is not goodness. Human legislation, in its enforcement of
law, looks not to the production of goodness but to the production of
order, a quite different thing. But God's heart is set upon the
sanctification of His children and is satisfied with nothing less than
that. "This is the will of God, even your sanctification." But
sanctification cannot be compelled. The divine method is, that "when the
fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born
under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might
receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God sent forth
the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." Through
this method we "were reconciled to God by the death of His Son." The
result is not that we are compelled to obey, but that "the love of
Christ constraineth us." The account of the apostolic authority is not
that it is a commission to rule the universal Church, but "now then we
are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us; we pray
you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God."

The study of this divine method should put us on the right