whole life to that cause. As His disciples watched Him on an occasion,
they remembered that it was written: "The zeal of thine house hath
eaten me up." Zeal is not a very popular quality because it is always
disturbing the equanimity and self-complacency of lukewarm people. And
then, we dislike to be thought fanatics. But I fancy that there will
always be a touch of the fanatic about any very zealous Christian, and
it is not worth while to suppress our zeal for fear of the world's
judgment upon it. What we have to avoid is the misdirection of zeal.
There is, no doubt, a zeal which is "not according to knowledge." We
need to be sure, in other words, that our zeal is a zeal for God, and
not a zeal for party or person or cause. It is no doubt quite easy to
imagine that we are seeking to do God's will when we are merely seeking
to impose on our own will. Self-seeking is quite destructive of the
friendship and service of God. The Kingdom whose interests we are
attempting to forward may turn out to be a Kingdom in which we expect to
sit on the right hand or the left of the throne because of the
brilliance of the service rendered.

Life is simplified very much when the will of God thus becomes its
guiding principle, and all other relations of life are subordinated to
our relation to our heavenly Father. Then have we brought life to that
complete simplicity which is near akin to peace. When we have learned in
deciding any line of action not to think what our neighbours and friends
will feel, or what the world will think, but only what God will think,
we have little difficulty in making up our minds. Suppose that a boy has
to make up his mind whether he will study for the priesthood, the vital
thing on which to concentrate his thought and prayer is whether God is
calling him to that life, and if he is convinced that he is being called
the whole question should be settled. In fact in most cases it is far
from being settled because this simplicity has not been attained. There
is a whole social circle to be dealt with, who urge the hardness of the
life, the scant reward, the greater advantages of a business career, and
so on; all of which have absolutely nothing to do with the question to
be decided. It is so all through life. In most questions of life's
decisions, no doubt, there is no sense of any vocation at all, of a
determining will of God; but is not that because we assume that God has
no will in such matters, and leaves us fr