THE ROMANCE OF THE SOUL

What am I? In my flesh I am but equal to the beasts of the field. In my heart and mind I am corrupt Humanity. In my soul I know not what I am or may be, and therein lies my hope.

O wonderful and mysterious soul, more fragile than gossamer and yet so strong that she may stand in the Presence of God and not perish!

"Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove."—Psalm lxviii. 13.

By what means shall the ordinary man and woman, living the usual everyday life, whether of work or of leisure, find God? And this without withdrawing themselves into a life apart—a "religious" life, and without outward and conspicuous piety always running to public worship (though often very cross and impatient at home); without leaving undone any of the duties necessary to the welfare of those dependent on them; without making themselves in any way peculiar;—how shall these same people go up into the secret places of God, how shall they find the marvellous peace of God, how satisfy those vague persistent longings for a happiness more complete than any they have so far known, yet a happiness which is whispered of between the heart and the soul as something which is to be possessed if we but knew how to get it? How shall ordinary mortals whilst still in the flesh re-enter Eden even for an hour? for Eden is not dead and gone, but we are dead to Eden—Eden, the secret garden of enchantment where the soul and the mind and the heart live in the presence of God and hear once more "the voice of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day" (Gen. iii.).

It is possible for these things to come to us or we to them, and in quite a few years if we set our hearts on them. First we must desire; and after the desire, steady and persistent, God will give. And we say, "But I have desired and I do desire, and God does not give. Why is this?" There are two reasons for it. For one—are these marvellous things to be given because of one cry; for one petulant demand; for a few tears, mostly of self-pity, shed in an hour when the world fails to satisfy us, when a friend has disappointed us, when our plans are spoiled, when we are sick or lonely? These are the occasions on which we mostly find time to think of what we call a better world, and of the consolations of God.

But let anyone have all that he can fancy, be carried high upon the flood-tide of prosperity, ambition, and success, and how much time will he or she give to Almighty God?—not two moments during the day. Yet the Maker of all things is to bestow His unspeakable riches upon us in return for two moments of our thought or love! Does a man acquire great worldly wealth, or fame, in return for two moments of endeavour?

"Ah," some of us may cry, "but it is more than two moments that I give Him; I give Him hours, and yet I cannot find Him." If that is really so, then the second reason is the one which would explain why He has not been found. A great wall divides us from the consciousness of the Presence of God. In this wall there is one Door, and one only, Jesus Christ. We have not found God because we have not found Him first as Jesus Christ in our own heart. Now whether we take our heart to church, whether we take it to our daily work, or whether we take it to our amusements, we shall not find Jesus in any one place more than another if He is not already in our hearts to begin with. How shall I commence to love a Being whom I have never seen? By thinking about Him; by thinking about Him very persistently; by comparing the world and its friendships and its loves and its deceits and its secret enviousnesses with all that we know of the lovely ways of gentle Jesus. If we do this consistently, it is impossible not to find Him more lovable than any other person that we know. The more lovable we find Him the more we think about Him, by so much the more we find ourselves beginning to love Him, and once we have learnt to hold Him very warmly and tenderly in our heart, then we are well in the way to find the Christ and afterwards that divine garden of the soul in which God seems to slip His hand under our restless anxious heart and lift it high into a place of safety and repose.

When for some time we have learnt to go in and out of this garden, with God's tender help we make ourself a dear place—a nest under God's wing, and yet mysteriously even nearer than this, it is so near to God. To this place we learn to fly to and fro in a second of time: so that, sitting weary and harassed in the counting-house, in an instant a man can be away in his soul's nest; and so very great is the refreshment of it and the strength of it that he comes back to his work a new man, and so silently and quickly done that no one else in the room would ever know he had been there: it is a secret between his Lord and himself.

But the person who learns to do this does not remain the same raw uncivilised creature that once he or she was: but slowly must become quite changed; all tastes must alter, (all capacities will increase in an extraordinary manner), and all thoughts of heart and mind must become acceptable and pleasant to God.

The man who has not yet begun to seek God—that is to say, has not even commenced to try and learn how to live spiritually, but lives absorbed entirely in the things of the flesh—is a spiritual savage. To watch such a man and his ways and his tastes is to the spiritual man the same thing as when a European watches an African in his native haunts, notes his beads, his frightful tastes in decorations, foods, amusements, habits, and habitations, and, comparing them with his own ways, says instantly that man is a savage. This proud European does not pause to consider that he himself may be inwardly what the savage is—quite dark; that to God's eyes his own ways and tastes are as frightful as those of the African are to himself. What raises a man above a savage is not the size of his dining-room, the cut of his coat, the luxuries of his house, the learned books that adorn his bookshelves, but that he should have begun to learn how to live spiritually: this is the only true civilising of the human animal. Until it is commenced, his manners and his ways are nothing but a veneer covering the raw instincts of the natural man—instincts satisfied more carefully, more hiddenly, than those of the African, but always the same. There is little variety in the lusts of the flesh; they are all after one pattern, each of its kind, follow one another in a circle, and are very limited.

It is not the clay of our bodies fashioned by God which makes some common and some not. It is the independent and un-Godlike thoughts of our hearts and minds which can make of us common, and even savage, persons. The changing of these thoughts, the harmonising of them, and, finally, the total alteration of them, is the work in us of the Holy Spirit. By taking Christ into our hearts and making for Him there a living nest, we set that mighty force in motion which shall eventually make for us a nest in the Living God. For Jesus Christ is able (but only with our own entire willingness) to make us not only acceptable to God, but delightful to Him, so much so that even while we remain in the flesh He would seem not to be willing to endure having us always away from Him, but visits us and dwells with us after His own marvellous fashion and catches us up to Himself.

To begin with, we must have a set purpose and will towards God. In the whole spiritual advance it is first we who must make the effort, which God will then stabilise, and finally on our continuing to maintain this effort He will bring it to complete fruition. Thus step by step the spirit rises—first the effort, then the gift. First the will to