But before we can work successfully within the law we must know that the law really exists. Most people seem either to believe there is no law that will certainly bring them the results of their good or evil thoughts and acts or that if there is such a law they can in some way dodge it and escape the consequence, and so we see them go along through life always doing the selfish thing or the thoughtless thing. They misstate facts, they engage in gossip, they harbor evil thoughts, they have their enemies and hate them, they scheme to bring discomfort and humiliation upon those whom they dislike. And then, when the harvest from this misdirected energy is ripe and they are misled by the falsehoods of others to their loss and injury, when they fall into the company of schemers and are swindled, when a false story is started about them, when--through no fault of the moment--they are plunged into discomfort and humiliation, they merely call it so much bad luck and go blindly on with their generation of wrong forces that will in due time bring another enforced reaping of pain. There is a law that regulates the pleasure and pain of daily life as certainly as there is a law that guides the earth in its orbit about the sun. That law of action and reaction is just as constant, accurate and immutable as the law of gravity that keeps our feet upon the ground while we come and go and think nothing at all about it. There is something almost terrifying in the immutability of all natural laws and their utterly impersonal aspect. They are the operation of forces which, in themselves, are not related to what we call good and bad. They simply are. The law of gravity will illustrate the point. It operates with no consideration whatever for character or motives. It holds all people, good and bad alike, firmly upon the earth while it whirls through space. If a saint and a fiend stumble over a precipice, it will hurl them both to the bottom with perfect impartiality. If the fiend, who may just have murdered a victim, is more cautious than the saint and avoids the precipice, the law has not favored him. He has merely reaped the reward of his alertness in spite of his bad morals. The saintly man may have come fresh from some deed of mercy but the law of gravity takes no account of that. When he stepped over the precipice, and was dashed to death, he paid the penalty of carelessness regardless of his benevolence. There is profound wisdom in the words "God is no respecter of persons," for, of course, all natural laws are but the expression of the divine will.