. But it grieves me to think that I can do
nothing else for you. To receive so many favours from you, and to be
incapable of doing more in return--this is what saddens me. I feel an
ungrateful brute. You have brought new joy, hope, power into my life,
and I want to show my gratitude. You would be doing me a real kindness
if you would tell me how I could show it.

Don't think by what I have said that I simply care--as an 'Evangelical'
would say--for your 'soul.' Every part of your being--everything you do
or say--all that you are--has a strange fascination for me. Only I feel
that the whole of it is a revelation of {169} God; and I want that
revelation to be clearer, truer, simpler. I am sure God does not only
care for our souls. It is every part of our complicated being--all sides
of our manifold life--that attracts Him. He loves our home life, our
affection for the dear old Mother Earth which He made, our interest in
the men and women whom He formed in His own image. He longs that all
those interests should be developed--that we should live genuine, sane
human lives. But true development here or elsewhere--the law of
existence in heaven or on earth--is life through death. 'Verily, verily,
I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it
abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.' You must
give up all. As I think of you, those words keep ringing in my ears: 'If
any one cometh to Me, and hateth not his own father and mother, yea, and
his own self also, he cannot be My disciple.'

I cannot tell you what they mean. You must find them out for yourself.

If I were a true disciple of Christ, you could see what they mean by
looking at me. But I am not. You must learn their meaning for yourself.
Your mother's life will speak louder than words of mine. Only I know
they are true. Christ will recreate the world, recreate the home, human
beings, dear Mother Earth; but He cannot do so until you have been
willing to give up all--until He has caused you to be 'born again.' When
the ruler asked how these things could be, Christ could only repeat His
words. The man must work it out for himself.

But I am sure that he that willeth to do the will {170} shall know
whether the teaching be true. There are no doubt some mere intellectual
obscurities in the ideal which I might make simpler if I were not such a
duffer. But finally a paradox would be left--a paradox which can o