All of us would seem to have two personalities: we are the repentant and the unrepentant Magdalene and daily change from one to the other. But true repentance cannot come before love: if we think we repent before we love, then it is no more than a repentance of the mind, which says to itself, "I must stand well with God because of my future well-being." Where love comes first we get the repentance of the heart, which works this way in us--we love Jesus a little, we love Him more and more, and because of this love increasing to real warmth we suddenly perceive the frightful offences we have committed against this sweet love, and instantly the heart melts and breaks and we are shaken to our depths that we have ever grieved our Holy Lover. This is true repentance--no anxious fears for our own future, but love grieving and agonised for its offences. Such repentance as this pierces to the deepest recesses of the heart and mind, and leaves upon them a deep indelible mark, changing all the aims of our life, and is the beginning of all joys in Christ Jesus. Let us aim therefore not first at repentance, but first at love. A little love to Jesus given many times a day as we walk or wait or work, if only at first said by the lips with desire for more warmth, after a while we shall find ourselves giving it from the heart; then the Divine Seed has begun to grow because we have watered it. If the natural man were asked, "What is life? what is it to live?" he would reply, "It is to eat, drink, laugh, love, and have pleasure or pain: to hear, see, touch, taste and smell, and to be conscious that I do all these things." Yet this consciousness is but a tiny speck of consciousness, and some mysterious voice within the deeply-thinking man tells him that this is so. But how uncover a further consciousness? This is the secret of the soul.