in as the
Day-star in the man's own heart.[93]

There is throughout this simple little book a noble appreciation of
love as the "supream good" for the soul. "The God of infinite goodness
and eternal love" is a kind of refrain which bursts forth in these
pages again {265} and again. Love in _us_ is, he thinks, "a sparkle of
that immense and infinite Love of the King and Lord of Love."[94]
Salvation and eternal well-being consist for him in the formation of a
life "consecrated and united unto the true Light and Love of Christ."
The man who has this Life within him will always be willing and glad
when the time comes "to returne againe into the bosome of his heavenly
Father-God."[95] And not only is the man who has the Life of Christ in
him harmonized in love upwardly toward God; he is also harmonized
outwardly towards his fellows. "He is a member with all other men,
with the good as a lowly-minded disciple to them; with those that are
not in Christ, as a deare, sympathizing helper, doing his utmost to do
them good."[96] He has written his "little Treatise," he says, "as a
love-token from the Father" to help lead men out of the "darke pits of
the world's darkness" into the full Light of the soul's day-dawn.

The book lacks the robustness and depth that are so clearly in evidence
in most of the writings that have been dealt with in this volume, but
there is a beauty, a simplicity, a sweetness, a sincerity born of
experience, which give this book an unusual flavour and perfume. The
writer says that there is "an endless battle between the Seed of the
woman and the seed of the serpent," but one feels that he has fought
the battle through and won. He says that "a man should be unto God
what a house is to a man," _i.e._ a man should be a habitation of the
living God, and the reader feels that this man has made himself a
habitation for the divine presence within. He says if you want
spiritual help you must go to a "man who has skill in God," and one
lays down his slender book feeling assured that, out of the experience
of Christ in his own soul, he did have "skill in God," so that he could
speak to the condition of others. There was at least one man in
England in 1646 who knew that the true source and basis of religion was
to be found in the experience of Christ within and not in theological
notions of Him.

[1] The Italian titles of these two books are _Alfabeto Christiana_
(1546) and _Le Cento et dieci divine Con