death is
merely the natural sequence.

With this Divine self-realisation the Spirit assumes control and
mastery, and you are saved from the follies of error, and from the
consequences of error. Repent ye--turn from your trespasses and sins,
from your lower conceptions of life, of pleasure and of pain, and walk
in this way. The lower propensities and desires will lose their hold
and will in time fall away. You will be at first surprised, and then
dumfounded, at what you formerly took for pleasure. True pleasure and
satisfaction go hand in hand,--nor are there any bad after results.

All genuine pleasures should lead to more perfect health, a greater
accretion of power, a continually expanding sense of life and service.
When God is uppermost in the heart, when the Divine rule under the
direction of the Holy Spirit becomes the ruling power in the life of the
individual, then the body and its senses are subordinated to this rule;
the passions become functions to be used; license and perverted use give
way to moderation and wise use; and there are then no penalties that
outraged law exacts; satiety gives place to satisfaction. It was Edward
Carpenter who said: "In order to enjoy life one must be a master of
life--for to be a slave to its inconsistencies can only mean torment;
and in order to enjoy the senses one must be master of them. To dominate
the actual world you must, like Archimedes, base your fulcrum somewhere
beyond."

It is not the use, but the abuse of anything good in itself that brings
satiety, disease, suffering, dissatisfaction. Nor is asceticism a true
road of life. All things are for use; but all must be wisely, in most
cases, moderately used, for true enjoyment. All functions and powers are
for use; but all must be brought under the domination of the Spirit--the
God-illumined spirit. This is the road that leads to heaven here and
heaven hereafter--and we can rest assured that we will never find a
heaven hereafter that we do not make while here. Through everything runs
this teaching of the Master.

How wonderfully and how masterfully and simply he sets forth his whole
teaching of sin and the sinner and his relation to the Father in that
marvellous parable, the Parable of the Prodigal Son. To bring it clearly
to mind again it runs:

"A certain man had two sons: and the younger of them said to his father,
Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth _to me_. And he
divided unto them his living. And