God speaks to men now as He spoke to Moses or to David, though the manner may have changed. But the poor in spirit, those with whom pride of the past has not served to make them unwilling to learn, these hear the voice; the pure in heart see Him; the seekers after truth find Him, and to all He comes in the thrilling moment or in the quiet hour when the voice of the heart makes itself heard. XI The Price of Success _The Law of Selection_ _The Fallacy of Negation_ _The Secret of All_ _No life is lost that is lived for love._ _The only wealth you can possess is that you have in the heart._ _Love never knows hardship, even when it meets it._ _When men pray for harvest they often get a plow._ _A man's holiness is to be measured by the happiness he creates._ _The only way to reach heaven is by attempting to realize heaven now._ _Whatever is saved by selfishness is lost to the true self._ _One of the worst offenses against humanity is the pretense of divinity._ _Weapons that fly off the handle have little effect on the walls of sin._ _Many a man thinks that taking a lease on a front pew gives him a freehold on a corner lot in heaven._ _Success is not in an endeavour to do a great things but in repeated endeavours to do greater things._ XI THE LAW OF SELECTION Jesus said, "If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee," but this age finds it hard to accept that saying. It asks, If we are to throw life away why should it have been given to us? Why this selfhood with its passions, its surging desires, its great longing to be untrammelled and free if all is to be restrained and the passions are to be perpetually denied? If religion means, as some plainly have said, doing the things you don't want to do and leaving undone those you desire, then it is a mockery, a contradiction of our lives and natures. Therefore there exists another philosophy which says, boldly: Live out all that is in you; do all the things you want to do; your passions in themselves are sufficient justification for their gratification. They say man is free; therefore, let him realize himself by giving free and full expression to every thought, inclination, appetite, and possibility within him. When the average man puts the two philosophies in contrast he is likely to conclude that the path of self-denial, of stern repression, is the mistaken one; for, he will say, does it not contradict nature?--does it not involve the repression of natural instincts and make all life a perpetual fight against ourselves, a waste of forces, instead of, as it should be, a plan by which a man might find success through the realization of the best in himself?