These experiences give an immense and unshakable knowledge to the soul and the creature of the immense reality of the Unseen Life, and are doubtless sent us to effect this knowledge. Why, then, is not every man given this knowledge? Because the creature must qualify before being allowed to receive it, and too many hold back from the tests. By these experiences we learn some little portion of the mystery which lies between the pettiness of that which we now are and the great glories that we shall come to; and in this awful heavenly mystery in which are fires that have no flame, and melody which has no sound, the soul is drawn to Everlasting Love. But we cannot endure the bliss of it, and the soul prays to be covered on account of the creature. But because of the limitations of the flesh we are not to despise it but regard it not as an aim or end (as that if we satisfy its lusts that shall be our paradise), but regard it as a means. Christ willed the flesh and the world to be a rapid means of our return to God. Subdue the flesh without despising it, in humility and thankfulness. Suffer its trials and penalties not in dejection, rebellion, or hopelessness, but as a means to an end. "For everyone shall be salted with fire," says Scripture; and can anything whatever be well forged or made without it be first melted and cleaned? So, then, for each his Gethsemane. As for Christ, so for Judas, who, not being able to endure, went out and hanged himself. Let our care, then, be to choose that Gethsemane which shall open to us the gates of heaven and not hell.