So I, the individual, try to confront each day with the knowledge that I am infused with a guiding, animating principle which will not let me drop behind, or lose my modest reward, so long as I trust to the force which carries me along. By trusting to it I mean resting on it quietly, without worrying, without being afraid that it will fail me. "Fret not thyself, else shalt thou be moved to do evil."[34] By doing evil, I presume is meant making a mistake, taking the wrong course. If, however great the cause, I fret myself I disturb the right conditions. By disturbing the right conditions I choke off the flow of the life-principle through my energies. [34] The Book of Psalms. V At a moment when the little buffer state between Egypt and Assyria was afraid of being overrun by the one or the other it was frantically casting about to decide with which it would throw in its lot. "With neither," a great prophet thundered in the ears of the people. "In calmly resting your safety lieth; in quiet trust shall be your strength."[35] [35] The Book of Isaiah. My small experience in the conquest of fear can be condensed into these four words: Calmly resting! quiet trust! That amid the turmoil of the time and the feverishness of our days it is always easy I do not pretend. Still less do I pretend that I accomplish it. I have said, a few lines above, that _I tried_. Trying is as far as I have gone; but even trying is productive of wonderful results. VI Least of all do I claim to have covered the whole ground, or to have discussed to its fulness any one of the points which I have raised. Whole regions of thought which bear on my subject--such as psychology, philosophy, and religion as I understand the word--I have carefully endeavoured to avoid. My object has been to keep as closely as possible to the line of personal experience, which has a value only because it is personal. Telling no more than what one man has endeavoured to work out, what I have written seeks no converts. Though, for the sake of brevity, it may at times seem to take a hortatory tone, it is a record and no more. In it the reader will doubtless find much to correct, and possibly to reject; and this must be as it happens. What I hope he will neither correct nor reject is the sincerity of the longing to find God's relations to the phenomena of life, and the extent to which the phenomena of life reflect God. VII