refreshingly helpful when
we think we have discovered a practical truth that works, and then see
that it is only another way of putting what has been taught for the
last two thousand years.

Many of us understand and appreciate the truth that a man's true
character depends upon his real, interior motives. He is only what his
motives are, and not, necessarily, what his motives appear to be. We
know that, if a man only controls the appearance of anger and hatred,
he has no real self-control whatever. He must get free from the anger
itself to be free in reality, and to be his own master. We must stop
and think, however, to understand that this is just what the Lord meant
when He told us to clean the inside of the cup and the platter, and we
need to think more to realize the strength of the warning, that we
should not be "whitened sepulchres."

We know that we are really related to those who can and do help us to
be more useful men and women, and to those whom we can serve in the
most genuine way; we know that we are wholesomely dependent upon all
from whom we can learn, and we should be glad to have those freely
dependent upon us whom we can truly serve. It is most strengthening
when we realize that this is the true meaning of the Lord's saying,
"For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my
sister, and mother." That the Lord Himself, with all His strength, was
willing to be dependent, is shown by the fact that, from the cross, He
said to those who had crucified Him, "I thirst." They had condemned
Him, and crucified Him, and yet He was willing to ask them for drink,
to show His willingness to be served by them, even though He knew they
would respond only with a sponge filled with vinegar.

We know that when we are in a hard place, if we do the duty that is
before us, and keep steadily at work as well as we can, that the hard
problem will get worked through in some way. We know that this is true,
for we have proved it over and over; but how many people realize that
it is because the Lord meant what He said when He told us: to "take no
thought for the morrow, for the morrow will take thought for the things
of itself."

I am reasoning from the proof of the law to the law itself.

There is no end to the illustrations that we might find proving the
spiritual common sense of the New Testament and, if by working first in
that way, we can get through this fog of tradition, of sentimentality,
and of