Having once re-found God, the soul frequently cries to Him in an anguish of pained wonder, "How could I ever have left Thee? How could I ever have been faithless to Thine Unutterable Perfections?" This to the soul remains the mystery of mysteries. Was it because of some imperfection left in her of design by God in order that He might enjoy His power to bring her back to Him? If this were so, then every single soul must be redeemed--and not for love's sake, but for His Honour, His own Holy Name, His Perfection. If the soul left Him because of a deliberate choice, a preference for imperfection, a poisonous curiosity of foreign loves, then love alone is the cause and necessity of our redemption, and so it feels to be, for in experience we find that love is the beginning and the middle and the end of all His dealings with us. * * * What is our part and what is our righteousness in all this Process of the Saviour? This--that we obey, and that we renounce our own will, accepting and abiding by the Will of God: and this self-lending, self-surrender, this sacrifice of self-will is counted to us for sufficient righteousness to merit heavenly life. But from first to last we remain conscious that we have no righteousness of our own, that we are very small and full of weaknesses, and remain unable to think or say, "This is my righteousness, I am righteous," any more than a man standing bathed in, or receiving the sunlight can say or think, "I am the sun." Is all this, then, as much as to say that we can sit down and do nothing; but, leaving all to Christ, we merely believe, and because of this believing our redemption is accomplished? No, for we have an active part to play, a part that God never dispenses with--the active keeping of the will in an active state of practical obedience, submission, humble uncomplaining endurance through every kind of test. What will these perhaps too much dreaded tests be that He will put us through? He will make use of the difficulties, opportunities, temptations, and events of everyday life in the world (which difficulties we should have to pass through whether we become regenerated or not) down to the smallest act, the most secret thought, the most hidden intention and desire. But through it all it is the Great Physician Himself who cures, and we are no more able to perform these changes of regeneration in heart and mind than we are able to perform a critical operation on our own body. So He takes our vanities and, one by one, strews them among the winds, and we raise no protest; takes our prides and breaks them in pieces, and we submit; takes our self-gratifications and reduces them to dust, and we stand stripped but patient; takes the natural lusts of the creature and transfigures them to Holy Love. And in all this pain of transition, what is the Divine Anaesthetic that He gives us? His Grace.