Remember, also, for its practical fruit’s sake, this fact, that each stage requires fidelity in the preceding. You must have been true to the better impulses of youth, that you may be, to the best advantage, a servant of the law of maturity. You must be faithfully obedient to duty, before you are fit to be a subject of grace. Do not imagine you can glide over into the favor of heaven, without first keeping the commandment. It is a strait gate, and a narrow way that leads to life. I must be a cheerful servant, before I can know the joy of adoption, and cry, “Abba, Father.” Willing to be constrained by the positive precept, I may hope, by-and-by, for the freedom of a child and heir. Many things that I would rather not do—irksome to the sluggish will, hard to the love of ease, offensive to pride, bitter to selfish pleasure—I must do, before I can ascend to that sublime self-mastery with Christ, where I shall _desire_ to do only what I ought. You have seen a seabird, which in rising from the waves has to run some way with difficulty upon the water, striking the surface laboriously with its pinions; but when it has once lifted itself into the upper air, it balances its flight with a calm motion, and enfranchised into the freedom of the sky, the slow beat of its wings are imperceptible. It is by pain and toil _under_ the commandments, that the soul gets the liberty of its faculties; but when it has been taken up out of itself by love and trust, it moves in harmony with God. The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might “be justified by faith.” But “after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.” “All things are yours, and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” No longer at Gerizim, nor yet at Jerusalem, but everywhere, we may worship the Father!