The man who has not yet begun to seek God--that is to say, has not even commenced to try and learn how to live spiritually, but lives absorbed entirely in the things of the flesh--is a spiritual savage. To watch such a man and his ways and his tastes is to the spiritual man the same thing as when a European watches an African in his native haunts, notes his beads, his frightful tastes in decorations, foods, amusements, habits, and habitations, and, comparing them with his own ways, says instantly that man is a savage. This proud European does not pause to consider that he himself may be inwardly what the savage is--quite dark; that to God's eyes his own ways and tastes are as frightful as those of the African are to himself. What raises a man above a savage is not the size of his dining-room, the cut of his coat, the luxuries of his house, the learned books that adorn his bookshelves, but that he should have begun to learn how to live spiritually: this is the only true civilising of the human animal. Until it is commenced, his manners and his ways are nothing but a veneer covering the raw instincts of the natural man--instincts satisfied more carefully, more hiddenly, than those of the African, but always the same. There is little variety in the lusts of the flesh; they are all after one pattern, each of its kind, follow one another in a circle, and are very limited. It is not the clay of our bodies fashioned by God which makes some common and some not. It is the independent and un-Godlike thoughts of our hearts and minds which can make of us common, and even savage, persons. The changing of these thoughts, the harmonising of them, and, finally, the total alteration of them, is the work in us of the Holy Spirit. By taking Christ into our hearts and making for Him there a living nest, we set that mighty force in motion which shall eventually make for us a nest in the Living God. For Jesus Christ is able (but only with our own entire _willingness)_ to make us not only acceptable to God, but delightful to Him, so much so that even while we remain in the flesh He would seem not to be willing to endure having us always away from Him, but visits us and dwells with us after His own marvellous fashion and catches us up to Himself. To begin with, we must have a set purpose and _will_ towards God. In the whole spiritual advance it is first we who must make the effort, which God will then stabilise, and finally on our continuing to maintain this effort He will bring it to complete fruition. Thus step by step the spirit rises--first the effort, then the gift. First the will to do--and then the grace to do it with. Without the willing will God gives no grace: without God's grace no will of Man can reach attainment. God's will and Man's will, God's love and Man's love--these working and joining harmoniously together raise Man up into Eternal Life. * * *