‘Lead Thou me, God, and Thou, O Fate, Thy appointment I await: Only lead me, I shall go With no flagging steps nor slow: Even though I degenerate be, And consent reluctantly, None the less I follow Thee.’[285] “We can only do this when we keep our eyes fixed on Him, joined in close communion with Him, absolutely consecrated to His commandments. If we will not do it, we suffer loss. There are penalties imposed, not by a vindictive tyranny, but by a self-acting law. If we will not take what He gives under the conditions under which He gives it, we reap the fruit of wretchedness and sorrow, of jealousy and fear, of thwarted effort and unsatisfied desire.[286] “Above all, we must bide His time. He has given to every one of us a post to keep in the battle of life, and we must not leave it until He bids us.[287] His bidding is indicated by circumstances. When He does not give us what our bodies need, when He sends us where life according to nature is impossible, He, the Supreme Captain, is sounding the bugle for retreat,[288] He, the Master of the Great Household, is opening the door and saying to us, ‘Come.’[289] And when He does so, instead of bewailing your misfortunes, obey and follow: come forth, not murmuring, but as God’s servant who has finished His work, conscious that He has no more present need of you.[290] “This, therefore, should take the place of every other pleasure, the consciousness of obeying God. Think what it is to be able to say, ‘What others preach, I am doing: their praise of virtue is a praise of me: God has sent me into the world to be His soldier and witness, to tell men that their sorrows and fears are vain, that to a good man no evil can happen whether he live or die. He sends me at one time here, at another time there: He disciplines me by poverty and by prison, that I may be the better witness to mankind. With such a ministry committed to me, can I any longer care in what place I am, or who my companions are, or what they say about me: nay, rather, does not my whole nature strain after God, His laws and His commandments?’”[291] Between the current ethics of the Greek world and the ethics of the earliest forms of Christianity were many points both of difference and of contact.