eedeth out of
the mouth of God. That is the hourly guidance which is independent
of the law. And how terrible to think that all the spiritual beauty of
such a religion should have been hardened into chapter and verse and
regulation. You have put into language what I think of Mr. Bentley,
--that has acts are sacraments . . . . It is so simple when you explain
it this way. And yet I can see why it was said, too, that we must become
as children to understand it."

"The difficult thing," replied Holder, gravely, "is to retain it, to hold
it after we have understood it--even after we have experienced it. To
continue to live in the Spirit demands all our effort, all our courage
and patience and faith. We cannot, as you say, promise to love for life.
But the marriage service, interpreted, means that we will use all our
human endeavour, with the help of the Spirit, to remain in what may be
called the reborn state, since it is by the Spirit alone that true
marriage is sanctified. When the Spirit is withdrawn, man and woman
are indeed divorced.

"The words 'a sense of duty' belong to moral philosophy and not to
religion. Love annuls them. I do not mean to decry them, but the reborn
are lifted far above them by the subversion of the will by which our will
is submitted to God's. It is so we develop, and become, as it were, God.
And hence those who are not married in the Spirit are not spiritually man
and wife. No consecration has taken place, Church or no Church. If
rebirth occurs later, to either or both, the individual conscience--which
is the Spirit, must decide whether, as regards each other, they are bound
or free, and we must stand or fall by that. Men object that this is
opening the door to individualism. What they fail to see is that the
door is open, wide, to-day and can never again be closed: that the law
of the naturally born is losing its power, that the worn-out authority of
the Church is being set at naught because that authority was devised by
man to keep in check those who were not reborn. The only check to
material individualism is spiritual individualism, and the reborn man
or woman cannot act to the detriment of his fellow-creatures."

In her turn she was silent, still gazing at him, her breath coming
deeply, for she was greatly moved.

"Yes," she said simply, "I can see now why divorce between us would be a
sacrilege. I felt it, John, but I couldn't reason it out. It is the
consecration of the Spirit that ju