s? But, after all, I must not, I dare not, advise you.
I can only point you to the Being who alone can advise us. The great
thing is to renounce all plans, all thoughts of self, to give up all we
are and expect to be, to come into His presence, and then to ask His
advice. Or rather we must come to Him like little helpless children and
ask Him to _help_ us to renounce planning and arranging with _self_ as
goal--to beg Him to give us strength to give up all.

The great thing is to get the life where we shall develop best all our
powers--viz. the life in which we shall have most opportunities of
sacrifice. Can you get, can you _use_, opportunities of self-sacrifice
in your school life? Can you get fuller and better elsewhere? . . . Of
course, if you find that you have more influence over boys than you would
be likely to have over other folk, that might alter the case. Have you
found that you can influence them more for good than you would be likely
to influence others?

Our one work in life must be to advance God's glory, God's kingdom. The
time is short. The night {88} soon comes. The great problem is how to
do most in that short time; how we ourselves can best lose ourselves in
the little time that we have for losing ourselves. 'He that loseth
himself, findeth himself.'

_To D. D. R._

14 St. Margaret's Road, St. Leonards; January 10, 1893.

I have been thinking to-day of that strange statement 'I no longer call
you slaves . . . but I have called you friends.' To understand any one
you must be their friend: you are able then to judge their life from the
inside, to see why and how they do what they do; all their actions which
seemed disconnected and purposeless before are seen to be part of a plan,
to have an end, a goal. We cannot understand the riddle of life, the
necessity of all the details in the great scheme of redemption, the
reason for certain means of grace, the real significance of the hope of
glory, while we are slaves. The whole appears so purposeless, such waste
of energy, such unintelligible and irrational self-sacrifice. Why must
the Christ suffer? Why could not sin be overcome in a less costly way?
Why is the victory of the Christ so incomplete? Why do some, who are
better than we, take so little interest in the eternal? We cannot answer
these and a thousand other questions while we are slaves. All is a
hopeless enigma, a play without a plot, a novel with no plan. But become
a