it
this initial step, and no man can teach another the lesson which lies in
his own experience. The prophets of the Old Testament found an accurate
expression for this act of will when they described it as a 'turning,'
and they went on to assure their people of the perfect inward peace and
the sense of confidence which followed this act. 'Look unto me and be ye
saved,' says Isaiah; 'Incline your ear and come unto me; hear, and your
soul shall live.' From that time to this, thousands of those who have
thus changed the direction of their wills have entered into the same
sense of peace; while no man who has thus given his will to God has ever
felt himself permanently bewildered or forsaken.

"Here, also, in this free act of the will is attained that sense of
liberty which is described as righteousness. It is a sense of initiative
and power, as though one were not wholly the subject of arbitrary grace,
but had a certain positive companionship with God.... This step once
taken both the world in which one lives and one's own personal life get
a clear and intelligible meaning."

Mrs. Browning has a line in "Aurora Leigh" that runs,--

"And having tried all other ways, to just try God's."

Ignorance and blindness may "try all other ways," and they prove
unavailing. There is no success, there is no happiness, there is no
progress, until there is the clear inner recognition and the profound
and loving and joyful acceptance of the Divine will; of coming into such
perfect acceptance of it as to make one's own will identified with its
harmony.

Thus, when Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life," He
simply expressed a fact that cannot be negatived nor ignored. It is an
actual, a positive law, as impossible to evade as the law of
gravitation. One may refuse "the way, the truth, and the life," and
wander in bewilderment and inaction; but he will never be able to
achieve worthy work, or personal peace, until he accepts and lives by
this law. As Professor Hilty so well says, this, alone, gives life an
intelligent meaning. "As one follows the way, he gains, first of all,
courage, so that he dares to go on in his search. He goes still
further, and the way opens into the assurance that life, with all its
mystery, is not lived in vain. He pushes on, and the way issues into
health, not only of the soul, but even of the body; for bodily health is
more dependent on spiritual condition than spiritual condition is on
bodily he