religious emotion, and find the living power of the book itself,
then we can get a more and more clear comprehension of the laws it
teaches, and will, every day, be proving their practical power in all
our dealings with life and with people. Whether we are wrestling with
nature in scientific work, whether we are working in the fine arts, in
the commercial world, in the professional world, or are dealing with
nations, it is always the same,--we find our freedom to work fully
realized only when we are obedient to law, and it is a wonderful day
for any human being when he intelligently recognizes and finds himself
getting into the current of the law of the New Testament. The action of
that law he sees is real, and everything outside he recognizes as
unreal. In the light of the new truth, we see that many things which we
have hitherto regarded as essential, are of minor importance in their
relation to life itself.

The old lady who said to her friend, "My dear, it is impossible to
exaggerate the unimportance of things," had learned what it meant to
drop everything that interferes, and must have been truly on her way to
the concentration which should be the very central power of all
life,--obedience to the two great commandments.

Concentration does not mean straining every nerve and muscle toward
obedience, it means _dropping every thing that interferes._ If we drop
everything that interferes with our obedience to the two great
commandments, and the other laws which are given us all through the New
Testament to help us obey, we are steadily dropping all selfish
resistance, and all tendency to selfish responsibility; and in that
steady effort, we are on the only path which can by any possibility
lead us directly to freedom.

XIII

_About Christmas_

THERE was once a family who had a guest staying with them; and when
they found out that he was to have a birthday during his visit they
were all delighted at the idea of celebrating it. Days before--almost
weeks before--they began to prepare for the celebration. They cooked
and stored a large quantity of good things to eat, and laid in a stock
of good things to be cooked and prepared on the happy day. They planned
and arranged the most beautiful decorations. They even thought over and
made, or selected, little gifts for one another; and the whole house
was in hurry and confusion for weeks before the birthday came.
Everything else that was to be done was postponed un