ed by the
various connections in which this commandment occurs in the chapter,
from which I draw the few remarks I have to make now.

And the first point I would suggest is that very old commonplace one,
so often forgotten, that after all, though you may change about as
much as you like, there is a pretty substantial equipoise and
identity in the amount of pain and pleasure in all external
conditions. The total length of day and night all the year round is
the same at the North Pole and at the Equator--half and half. Only,
in the one place, it is half and half for four-and-twenty hours at a
time, and in the other, the night lasts through gloomy months of
winter, and the day is bright for unbroken weeks of summer. But, when
you come to add them up at the year's end, the man who shivers in the
ice, and the man who pants beneath the beams from the zenith, have
had the same length of sunshine and of darkness. It does not matter
much at what degrees between the Equator and the Pole you and I live;
when the thing comes to be made up we shall be all pretty much upon
an equality. You do not get the happiness of the rich man over the
poor one by multiplying twenty shillings a week by as many figures as
will suffice to make it up to L10,000 a year. What is the use of such
eager desires to change our condition, when every condition has
disadvantages attending its advantages as certainly as a shadow; and
when all have pretty nearly the same quantity of the raw material of
pain and pleasure, and when the amount of either actually experienced
by us depends not on where we are, but on _what_ we are?

Then, still further, there is another consideration to be kept in
mind upon which I do not enlarge, as what I have already said
involves it--namely, that whilst the portion of external pain and
pleasure summed up comes pretty much to the same in everybody's life,
any condition may yield the fruit of devout fellowship with God.

Another very remarkable idea suggested by a part of the context
is--What is the need for my troubling myself about outward changes
when _in Christ_ I can get all the peculiarities which make any
given position desirable to me? For instance, hear how Paul talks to
slaves eager to be set free: 'For he that is called in the Lord,
_being_ a servant, is the Lord's freeman: likewise also he that
is called, _being_ free, is Christ's servant.' If you generalise
that principle it comes to this, that in union with Jesus C