[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows: _teknia_--tau, epsilon, kappa, nu, iota, alpha; _mou_--mu, omicron, upsilon; _ous_--omicron, upsilon, final sigma; _palin_--pi, alpha, lambda, iota, nu; _mechris_--mu, epsilon, ch, rho, iota, final sigma; _ou_--omicron, upsilon; _morphothe_--mu, omicron, rho, phi, omega, theta, eta; _Christos_--Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron, final sigma; _en_--epsilon, nu; _humin_--(rough breathing mark) upsilon, mu, iota, nu] These words sum up for me, better than any others, my deepest wish for my friends. I fall back with desperate energy upon prayer, as the one power by which my wish can be realised. You seem to look ahead almost more than is necessary. I delight in the feeling that I am in eternity, that I can serve God now fully and effectively, that the next piece of the road will come in sight when I am ready to walk on it 'I do not ask to see the distant scene.' I hate the unsettled feeling that I have not yet begun my main work. Don't measure work by human standards of greatness. Your present occupation might well be the envy of angels--if they could envy. But now I am lecturing. So it is time to shut up. . . . I fear that the origin of evil is more of a mystery to me now than when I wrote that essay! But I still think that we are fighting a real being, one whom {174} we can best describe as personal. His will, it seems to me, must be given to him by God. He has identified it with a hitherto unrealised potentiality for disobedience. In plain language, his will is free, and therefore capable of resisting God. I should like to have a talk with you some day about it. But, as you see, the problem is beyond me. . . . It is a strength to me to feel that you are fighting the devil in yourself and others up in ----, and that I am 'one man' with you. _To D. B. K._ St. Moritz: January 1903. It is getting on for your birthday, isn't it? Congratulations. I wish I knew the exact day. I think more and more that a birthday is a subject not--as poor Job thought--for anathemas, but for congratulations. To be a reasonable human being--with capacity for seeing something of God's purposes for the race--with power to forward them--with opportunities for love and sacrifice and prayer--oh! I am so glad that I was not a mere animal. And to be born at the end of the nineteenth century--I prefer that period even to Apostolic times. We can know more of God's purposes, enter more deeply into His mind and even His heart, than primitive Christians.