Now the healthful influence of the movement known as "The Higher Thought" consists precisely in this--that it sets itself rigorously to combat this debilitating doctrine of submission. It can see as well as others the beauty of weakness leaning upon strength; but it sees that the real source of the beauty lies in the strong element of the combination. The true beauty consists in the power to confer strength, and this power is not to be acquired by submission, but by the exactly opposite method of continually asserting our determination not to submit. Of course, if we take it for granted that all the sorrow, sickness, pain, trouble, and other adversity in the world is the expression of the will of God, then doubtless we must resign ourselves to the inevitable with all the submission we can command, and comfort ourselves with the vague hope that somehow in some far-off future we shall find that "Good is the final goal of ill," though even _this_ vague hope is a protest against the very submission we are endeavouring to exercise. But to make the assumption that the evil of life is the will of God is to assume what a careful and intelligent study of the laws of the universe, both mental and physical, will show us is not the truth; and if we turn to that Book which contains the fullest delineation of these universal laws, we shall find nothing taught more clearly than that submission to the evils of life is not submission to the will of God. We are told that Christ was manifested for this end, that he should destroy him that hath the power of death--that is, the devil. Now death is the very culmination of the Negative. It is the entire absence of all that makes Life, and whatever goes to diminish the living quality of Life reproduces, in its degree, the distinctive quality of this supreme exhibition of the Negative. Everything that tends to detract from the fulness of life has in it this deathful quality.