lds where all things grow in their own way the weeds become
the standard for all; license brings all down to the level of the
lowest. But life is not license--it is choice, selection, sacrifice,
death. Pain is the only price at which perfection may be purchased.
Self-realization comes not by permitting all things to have their way
but by subjecting all parts to the securing of that high end.

It is but cowardice that cries for the so-called natural outworking of
everything within man; it seeks to save the labour of weeding, the pain
of cutting here and pruning there. It asks only to be left alone. But
that way lies the deepest pain of all, the pain of a life where there
is nothing but tangles of weeds--no flowers, no capacities for joy, no
power to will, no eye to see the good and true and beautiful.

No; the great Teacher was right when He called for self-denial and
self-victory. He only is great, he alone has found life who has
learned to bring all his parts and faculties into service, who brings
all his body and self into subjection that all may be keen and well
kept tools in the work he is doing as a servant of his brothers and his
age. This service gives the supreme and sufficient motive for the
suppression and elimination of all things that might hinder; the
development of the best self for the best service by means of the
cutting off of anything that might hinder or thwart the high and holy
service purposes of a life.

THE FALLACY OF NEGATION

The ancient law that nature abhors a vacuum holds true in the moral
realm. The heart of man is never long empty. And yet the whole scheme
of modern ecclesiastical regulation of life is built on the plan of
making a man holy by emptying him of all evil and stopping there,
leaving a negative condition, without a thought of the necessity of
filling the void.

So long have we been trained in this that we are all a good deal more
concerned about the things we ought not to do than about the things we
ought to do. We spend our days nipping off the buds of evil
inclinations, pulling up the weeds of evil habits, wondering how it
happens they multiply so fast, forgetting altogether the wiser plan we
would adopt with weeds and briers in our gardens.

There are many who still think of the pious man as one who succeeds in
accomplishing the largest number of repressions in his life, the ideal
being the colourless life, never doing a thing that is wrong or subject
to c