“If we once realize this kinship, no mean or unworthy thought of ourselves can enter our souls.[269] The sense of it forms a rule and standard for our lives. If God be faithful, we also must be faithful: if God be beneficent, we also must be beneficent. If God be highminded, we also must be highminded, doing and saying whatever we do and say in imitation of and union with Him.[270] “Why did He make us? “He made us, first of all, to complete His conception of the universe: He had need for such completion of some beings who should be intelligent.[271] He made us, secondly, to behold and understand and interpret His administration of the universe: to be His witnesses and ministers.[272] He made us, thirdly, to be happy in ourselves: like a true Father and Guardian, he has placed good and evil in those things which are within our own power.[273] What He says to each one of us is, ‘If thou wilt have any good, take it from within thyself.’[274] To this end He has given us freedom of will; there is no power in heaven or earth that can bar our freedom.[275] We cry out in our sorrow, ‘O Lord God, grant that I may not feel sorrow;’ and all the time He has given us the means of not feeling it.[276] He has given us the power of bearing and turning to account whatever happens, the spirit of manliness and fortitude and high-mindedness, so that the greater the difficulty, the greater the opportunity of adorning our character by meeting it. If, for example, fever comes, it brings from Him this message, ‘Give me a proof that your moral training has been real.’ There is a time for learning, and a time for practising what we have learnt: in the lecture-room we learn: and then God brings us to the difficulties of real life and says to us, ‘It is time now for the real contest.’ Life is in reality an Olympic festival: we are God’s athletes, to whom He has given an opportunity of showing of what stuff we are made.[277] “What is our duty to Him? “It is simply to follow Him:[278] to be of one mind with Him:[279] to acquiesce in His administration:[280] to accept what His bounty gives, to resign ourselves to the absence of what He withholds.[281] The only thought of a good man is, remembering who he is, and whence he came, and to Whom he owes his being, to fill the place which God has assigned to him,[282] to will things to be as they are, and to say what Socrates used to say, ‘If this be God’s will, so be it.’[283] Submission must be thy law: thou must dare to lift up your eyes to God and say, ‘Employ me henceforth for what service Thou wilt: I am of one mind with Thee: I am Thine: I ask not that Thou shouldest keep from me one thing of all that Thou hast decreed for me.’[284]