Where the man does not know it, it is because the unfaithful Self, a would-be monarch, has usurped the consciousness—the demon-man, is uppermost, not the Christ-man. If ever the true cry of the heart reaches that Self, it calls it childish folly, and tries to trample it out. It does not know that a child crying to God is mightier than a warrior armed with steel.

If there was nothing but fine weather in our soul, the demon-self would be too much for the divine-Self, and would always keep it down. But bad weather, misfortune, ill-luck, adversity, or whatever name men may call it, sides with the Christ-self down below, and helps to make its voice heard.

To the people at Burcliff came at length a lovely morning, with sky and air like the face of a repentant child—a child who has repented so thoroughly that the sin has passed from him, and he is no longer even ashamed. The water seemed dancing in the joy of a new birth, and the wind, coming and going in gentle conscious organ-like swells, was at it with them, while the sun kept looking merrily down on the glad commotion his presence caused.

“Ah,” thought the mother, as she looked from her windows before she began to dress for this new live day, “how would it be if the Light at the heart of the sun were shining thus on the worlds made in his image!”

She was thinking of her boy, whom perhaps, in all the world, only she was able to love heartily—there was so little in the personal being of the lad, that is, in the thing he was to himself, and was making of himself, to help anyone to love him! But in the absolute mere existence is reason for love, and upon that God does love—so love, that he will suffer and cause suffering for the development of that existence into a thing in its own full nature lovable, namely, an existence in its own will one with the perfect love whence it came. And the mother’s heart more than any other God has made is like him in power of loving.

Alas that she is so seldom like him in wisdom—so often thwarting the work of God, and rendering more severe his measures with her child by her attempts to shield him from His law, and save him from saving sorrow. From his very infancy, she actively teaches him to be selfish, gets between him and the right consequences of his conduct, as if with her one feeble, loving hand she would stop the fly-wheel of the universe. It is the law that the man who does wrong shall suffer. It is the only hope for him and the neighbour he wrongs. When he forsakes his evil, one by one the dogs of his suffering will drop away from his track. He will find at last that they have but hounded him into the land of his nativity, into the home of his Father in heaven.