In regard to those words, 'I looked behind to find my past, and lo it had gone before,' I do not know whether you are right or wrong about the Greek idea. The past _has_ gone before us, we are always coming upon it. Some day we shall be confronted with it. Every day that we live we are making something that we shall meet again. The only way to get unity into our lives--to make it possible to look back without sentimental repining or an awful sense of dread--is to get God as the centre, God as the foundation. As we look back then we shall find days 'linked each to each by natural piety'--we shall see that our life forms a connected whole a real progress, something worth calling life. . . . Do you know that the best way to strengthen your best thoughts is to try and express them? Get them out; you help others, you help yourself. Don't be careful of the grammatical accuracy and the finish of your sentences; I don't think St. Paul was. I was thinking to-day that perhaps a man who never wrote letters never could appreciate St. Paul. He was a great letter-writer. Copy him. Read him. Read him fairly quickly. Get into him. Find out his motive power, his real meaning. Read the Greek, not from a critical point of view only, but read the Greek. Do not trouble too much about the dictionary and accurate translations, but keep reading and perhaps saying aloud the Greek. St. Paul knew so much of God. Read him, and as you read, a greater than St. Paul will come into you, interpret {83} him, explain him. St. Paul himself will be with you, I think, trying to show you what he meant, and what he has found out that he means now.