This spiritual tie between man and his Maker has never been sufficiently emphasised by the Churches. Their religious forms of worship impress upon us that we are miserable sinners whatever we do, that we must try to save our souls, and that we must put as much as we can into the collection-plate. In great sorrow or difficulty these instructions are not very helpful. Sometimes indeed we doubt whether God meant us to consider ourselves such “miserable sinners” after all. Our perpetual whinings and lamentations cannot make sweet music on the Divine records. God gave us our bodies, not to chastise and mortify, but to care for and make healthy and beautiful; and the laws He has framed for our guidance and maintenance are such that if one be broken, punishment is bound to follow. There is no forgiveness, because there simply _cannot_ be any deviation in the mathematical precision of the universal plan. And the punishment is measured exactly to the fault. If we refuse to go forward, we must go back--we are not allowed to stand still. If a man elects to throw himself headlong from a steeple, not all the prayers of the saints could alter the law of gravitation which causes him to fall and break his neck. What is true of physical law is equally true of spiritual law, since Matter is simply Spirit substantiated and made temporarily visible in endless temporary forms. And all God-ordained laws, whether physical or spiritual, are framed for the guidance, benefit, and advancement of creation--whereas we, by devising other laws which pull contrary to Divine ways and means, find ourselves “in darkness and the shadow of death” instead of in light and the splendour of life. In our day Science has come to our rescue, and like a great Angel stands at the open door of the Kingdom of Heaven; she shows us the “many mansions” of worlds upon worlds in the Father’s House--she points out the loving care with which even the tiniest organism of life is protected--she instructs us how we may press the lightning into our service and use the waves of the air to convey our messages from one land to the other--and she impresses upon us, even as a loving mother impresses a beautiful truth upon her child, the fact that we--even we--are permitted to be the rulers of this wonderful planet, so full of exquisite beauty and joy--and that we are expected to use the endless gifts bestowed upon us with love, wisdom and courage, developing ourselves into a noble race of creatures worthy of ever nobler and higher issues.