[4]I may, perhaps, here be allowed to point out the ambiguity of the expression “immediate inspiration.” The word “immediate” may be understood to mean direct, and in this sense it is, I think, superfluous; for it is surely impossible to conceive of inspiration as indirect, although revelation may easily be so. But it may also, in reference to any particular thought communicated, be understood as meaning “instantaneous;” and in this sense a special importance has been attached to it by some Friends, which is, I believe, deprecated by others, as restricting “ministry” to the utterance of words believed to be at the moment given for utterance, under what is called a “fresh anointing” from above. I would, therefore, rather avoid at present the use of the expression “immediate inspiration,” when speaking of our belief that there is in every heart a witness for the truth, which is, so to speak, radiated from the central truth. The “light” seems, on the whole, to be the figure least open to any possible misinterpretation. [5]Let me not be understood to mean that the process of “keeping the mind” (in Quaker phrase) “retired to the Lord” is an easy one. On the contrary, it may need strenuous effort. But the _effort_ can be made at will and even the mere effort thus to retire from the surface to the depths of life is sure to bring help and strengthening—is in itself a strengthening, steadying process. [6]“If ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own?” (Luke XVI. 12). [7]I do not, of course, forget that, going to the imperfection of human laws and human faculties, cases may and do occur in which Divine guidance must lead us in ways which run counter to them. The figure used above is intended only to illustrate the general correspondence between the map, as it were, which can be laid down by the reason of man, and that individual and immediate guidance which alone can show us a higher and a narrower, but yet freer, pathway—the pathway of that highest service which is perfect freedom. When, in exceptional cases, any contrariety really emerges between the human and the Divine guiding lines, we may surely still, without too much straining of our figure, say that it is a living power only which can free any human spirit from the too narrow fencing in of a morbid or unenlightened conscience, and guide it by paths running counter to the beaten track of conventional morality, or even in some rare instances authorize and enable and require it to overleap even the cliffs of actual law, trusting that in such cases, as experience has already taught us, the blood of the martyrs will still be the seed of the Church.