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BYWAYS TO BLESSEDNESS 67

his delight (and it is a sweet, perpetual, and never-failing delight) is in obedience to the simple
demands of exact and never-failing law.
But this life of supreme blessedness is an end, and the pilgrim who is striving towards it, the
prodigal returning to it, must travel thither, and employ means to get there. He must pass through
the country of his animal desires, disentangling himself from their intricacies, simplifying them,
overcoming them; this is the way, and he has no enemies but what spring within himself. At first
the way seems hard because, blinded by desire, he does not perceive the simple structure of life,
and its laws are hidden from him; but as he becomes more simple in his mind the direct laws of
life become unfolded to his spiritual perception, and at once the point is reached where these laws
begin to be understood and obeyed; then the way becomes plain and easy; there is no more
uncertainty and darkness, but all is seen in the clear light of knowledge.

It will help to accelerate the progress of the searcher for the true and blessed life if we now
turn to a consideration of some of these simple laws which are rigidly mathematical in their
operations.

“The elementary laws never apologise.”

All life is one, though it has a diversity of manifestations; all law is one, but it is applicable and
operative in a variety of ways. There is not one law for matter and another for mind, not one for
the material and visible and another for the spiritual and invisible; there is the same law
throughout. There is not one kind of logic for the world and another for the spirit, but the same
logic is applicable to both. Men faithfully, and with unerring worldly wisdom, observe certain laws
or rules of action in material things, knowing that to ignore or disobey them would be great folly
on their part, ending in disaster for themselves and confusion for society and the state, but they
err in supposing and believing that the same rules do not apply in spiritual things, and thereby
suffer for their ignorance and disobedience.
It is a law in worldly things that a man shall support himself, that he shall earn his living, and
that “He that will not work, neither shall he eat.” Men observe this law, recognising its justice and
goodness, and so earn the necessary material sustenance. But in spiritual things men, broadly
speaking, deny and ignore the operation of this law. They think that, while it is absolutely just that
a man should earn his material bread, and that the man who shirks this law should wander in rags
ands want, it is right that they should beg for their spiritual bread, think it to be just that they

should receive all spiritual blessings without either deserving or attempting to earn them. The
result is that most men wander in spiritual beggary and want — that is, in suffering and sorrow —
deprived of spiritual sustenance, of joy and knowledge and peace.
If you are in need of any worldly thing — food, clothing, furniture, or other necessary — you do
not beg of the storekeeper to give it to you; you ask the price of it, pay for it with your money, and
then it becomes your own. You recognise the perfect justice in giving an equivalent for what you
receive, and would not wish it to be otherwise. The same just law prevails in spiritual things. If you
are in need of any spiritual thing — joy, assurance, peace, or whatelse soever — you can only
come into full possession of it by giving an equivalent; you must pay the price for it. As you must
give a portion of your material substance for a worldly thing so you must give a portion of your