Our great difficulty is that we try at one and the same time to hang to God with the soul and to the world with our heart. What is required is not that we go and live in rags in a desert place, but that in the exact circumstances of life in which we find ourselves we learn in _everything to place God first._ He requires of us a certain subtle and inward fidelity--a fidelity of the heart, the will, the mind. The natural state of heart and mind in which we all normally find ourselves is to have temporary vague longings for something which, though indefinable, we yet know to be better and more satisfying than anything we can find in the world. This is the soul, trying to overrule the frivolity of the heart and mind and to re-find God. Our difficulties are not made of great things, but of the infinitely small our own caprices. Though we can often do great things, acts of surprising heroism, we are held in chains--at once elastic and iron--of small capricious vanities, so that in one and the same hour we may have wonderful, far-reaching aspirations towards the Sublime, and God; and yet there comes a pretty frock, a pleasant companion, and behold God is forgotten! The mighty and marvellous Maker of the Universe, Lord of everything, is placed upon one side for a piece of chiffon, a flattering word from a passing lover. So be it. He uses no force. We are still in the Garden of Free-Will. And when the Garden closes down for us, what then? Will chiffon help us? Will the smiles of a long-since faithless lover be our strength? Now is the time to decide; but our decision is made in the world, and by means of the world and not apart from it, and in the exact circumstances in which we find ourselves. Another difficulty we have, and which forms an insuperable barrier to finding God, is the ever-recurring--we may almost say the continual--secret undercurrent of criticism and hardness towards God over what we imagine to be His Will. We need to seek God with that which is most like Him, with a will which most nearly resembles His own. To be in a state of hardness or criticism, not only for God but for any creature, in even the smallest degree is to be giving allegiance to, and unifying ourselves with, that Will which is opposite to, furthest away from, and opposed to God. He Himself is Ineffable Tenderness.