n either of these ways. As they went, they were cleansed. Not
in the moment of Christ's benediction, nor yet in the moment of
ecclesiastical recognition, but just between the two they were healed.

There is something like this very often in any man's deliverance from
his temptations {36} or cares or fears. A man, for instance, sets
himself to his intellectual task, but as he studies it is all dark
about him, and his mind seems dull and heavy, and no light shines upon
his work, and he goes away from it discouraged. But then, by some
miracle of the mind's working, such as each one of us in his own way
has experienced, his task gets solved for him, not as he works at it,
but as he turns to other things. Suddenly and mysteriously, sometimes
between the night's task and the morning's waking, his problem clears
up before him, and as he goes, his mind is cleansed. So a man goes out
into his life of duty-doing. He tries to do right, and he makes
mistakes; he does his best, and he fails. But then his life goes on
and other duties meet it, and out of his old mistakes comes new
success, and out of the discipline of his conscience brought about by
his failures comes the power of his conscience, and by degrees--he
hardly knows how--his will grows strong. So perhaps it happens that a
man some morning kneels down and says his prayer, and then rises and
goes out into the world, the same man with the same cares and fears on
his shoulder, as though {37} there had been no blessing from his
prayer. He passes out into the day's life all unchanged. But then, as
it sometimes happens through God's grace, as he goes, life seems
soberer and plainer, and, by the very prayer he thought unanswered, he
is healed. Not in the great hour of his petition, but as he trudges
along the dusty road of life the cleansing comes to him, and the burden
which he prayed might be taken from him, and which seemed to be left to
bear, drops unnoticed by the way.

{38}

XIV

LEARNING AND LIFE

_Romans_ xii. 1.

The letters of Paul, varied as they are in their purpose, have one
curious likeness. Each goes its way through a tangled argument of
doctrinal discussion, and then in almost every case each issues, as it
were, into more open ground, with a series of practical maxims for the
conduct of life. If you are looking for profound Biblical philosophy,
you turn to the first part of Paul's epistles. If you are looking for
rules of moral conduct