The permanent danger of giving our labour and our lives “for that which satisfieth not” was surely never more desperate than in these days of hurry and fulness, when merely to stand still needs a resolute effort of will. Are not half the lives we know carried along in a current they know not how to resist towards objects they but vaguely recognize, and in their heart of hearts do not value? Was the bondage of outward things ever more oppressive than it is to many of those who are ostensibly, and ought to be really, in a position of entire outward independence? How many of us have attained to the unspeakable repose of having our centre of gravity in the right place, of leaning upon nothing that can fail? There is no royal road to ridding ourselves of superfluities. It is a lifelong process of severe purification, which at every turn demands the sacrifice of the lower to the higher. But as this severity is the necessary price of attaining what is highest, so also it is the one spell by which life and significance and value can be given to what is lower. If it burns it also brightens; while it destroys it irradiates. I believe it to be in all things true that nothing can have its full value except when rightly subordinated to that which is of more importance than itself. If you sacrifice the higher to the lower, you not only make a bad bargain, but you injure the very object which you thus purchase. That of which you make an idol turns to dust in the process. The idol which you have the courage to pluck from its throne may come to life through that very act. From the closest human affection down to the most trivial outward adornment, all lovely things owe their perfection of loveliness to being held in their due subordination to what is yet higher. “He that will lose his life shall save it;” a hard saying, indeed,—with the hardness of the imperishable rock in which is our fortress and our stronghold. CHAPTER VI. OUR CALLING. I have endeavoured to explain what are those principles and practices into which we as a body have been led through what we believe to be obedience to the Spirit of Truth. I know that in some respects we seem to our fellow-Christians to have mistaken the voice of our Guide, and to be, through ignorance perhaps, but yet lamentably, excluding ourselves from the most precious privileges, if not consciously disregarding the most sacred injunctions. It is a very solemn question upon which we thus join issue with almost all the Churches of Christendom;—What is, in fact, essential Christianity?