clear ourselves from the deadening effects of tradition, from
sentimentality, from nice theory, and from every touch of emotional
and spurious peace, and take up the New Testament as if we were
reading it for the first time, and then if we could use it
faithfully as a working plan for a time, simply as an
experiment,--it would soon cease to be an experiment, and we should
not need to be told by any one that it is a divine revelation; we
would be confident of that in our own souls. Indeed that is the only
way any one can ever be sure of revelation; it must come to each of
us alone, as if it had never come to any one before; and yet the
beauty and power of it is such that it has come to myriads before us
and will come to myriads after us in just the same way.

But there is no real revelation for any one _until he has lived what
he sees to be true._ I may talk like an angel and assert with a
shining face my confident faith in God and in all His laws, but my
words will mean nothing whatever, unless I have so lived my faith
that it has been absorbed, into my character and so that the truths
of my working plan have become my second nature.

Many people have discovered that the Lord meant what He said when He
said: "Resist not evil," and have proved how truly practical is the
command, in their efforts to be willing to be ill, to be willing
that circumstances should seem to go against them, to be willing
that other people should be unjust, angry, or disagreeable. They
have seen that in yielding to circumstances or people
entirely,--that is, in dropping their own resistances,--they have
gained clear, quiet minds, which enables them to see, to understand,
and to practise a higher common sense in the affairs of their lives,
which leads to their ultimate happiness and freedom. It is now clear