But the sun, with its warming rays, smiles down upon the water, and the water rises in unseen vapor and floats into the atmosphere. There is no struggle and terrible compulsion and repression, but only silence, calmness, and peace. When it rises from the muddy pool, the stagnant pond, or the filthy gutter, it rises pure and clean, leaving behind the mud, the slime, the offensive odors, the noxious germs and bacteria. So when the sunshine of God’s love shines upon and warms our hearts, it lifts us up from all the slime and filth of sinful habits, clean and pure, into heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So long as the water is kept warm, it floats onward; but when it cools, it condenses and falls back again, perhaps into the same slimy pool. Likewise, so long as our hearts are kept warm by the rays of God’s love shining therein, our pure moral state is easily maintained; but when we lose the warmth of that love, lower things begin to attract us and soon we fall down toward the former level. Keep your heart ever turned toward the Sun of Righteousness, cherish its soul-warming rays of love, and you will float on the atmosphere of heaven far above the things of sin. TALK FIFTY-FIVE. GETTING EVEN “I’ll get even with that fellow if it takes ten years.” Thus declared a man about another who had wronged him, as his eyes flashed with passion and his teeth set firmly with resolve. In his heart he determined to do his enemy as great an injury as his enemy had done him. “Get even,” I thought; “what does it mean to get even?” Then appeared before my mind’s eye a view of the various classes of humanity, each person in the scale of morality where his life had placed him. I saw the Christian on God’s plane of holiness and truth. Far below him stood the moral though unchristian man, and down, down, step by step, my mental eye beheld man to the lowest depth of moral degradation. Vile and wrong deeds always degrade man to a lower state. Every evil deed, word, or thought lowers us in moral being. If some one has done evil toward us, he has lowered himself by that act; and for us to decide to “get even” by a similar act toward him is for us to decide that we will lower ourselves to his level. To “get even” means to get on the same level. It means to abase and degrade ourselves. If we “get even,” we are as bad as he, and worthy that others look upon us with the same feelings with which we regard him. If you want to get even with any one, do not choose some one below you, but some one above you in moral attainments, and labor to attain to his height, instead of the other’s depths. This will ennoble you, make you better, and be worthy of a reasoning being.