and thought. Are our
spirits or minds very good? Let those who are trying to learn and look
into the secrets of knowledge and science answer this. From the child
in school to the highest rank in scholarship ever held by any man, the
same complaint comes up, that lessons are hard, and what is acquired
as knowledge is very unsatisfactory.

But I have touched only the hem of sin's garment in what I have said.
If the soul or will of man were still very good, I mean to say here
that if man had not lost his love for his fellow-man and his love for
God; in other words, if man still loved the Lord his God with all his
heart and his neighbor as himself, feebleness of body and weakness of
mind would be matters of small moment. The body is soon done with any
way; and the mind or intellect is still sufficiently clear for all the
purposes of life in this world; and when once disengaged from the body
that here clogs and fetters it,--as it will be at death,--in the hope
of being lifted to a higher sphere of perception and thought, the loss
to man suffered by the fall in these two departments of his being
would be comparatively small.

But man's will or inmost love is the secret spring of life. From this
all his affections flow; and right here we find his Marah, the bitter
waters of his soul. In reading the story of the children of Israel in
the wilderness we learn that they came to a place where the waters
were all bitter. Brethren, that place is right in our own hearts. Our
hearts are the springs from which these bitter waters flow in the form
of "evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts,
covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye,
blasphemy, pride, foolishness." Mark 7:21, 22. What an outflow of
bitterness! Enough to flood a world to destruction! And this
destruction had come, and its arm would have held its power over man
eternally, had not the great Prophet, the Moses of love, come and cast
a tree into the waters whereby they were made sweet. The Lord in his
Word is this tree. He is the tree of life, whose leaves are for the
healing of the nations. His voice comes to us from far: "I am the Lord
that healeth thee; for the Son of man came to save that which was
lost."

It is of infinite importance for us to know how he saves us, what we
are expected to do, how we are to work with him and to what extent. I
will try to give some light on this from the Word itself. Jesus said
to his disciples: "If