17. As long as the sin bears no fruit,

The fool thinks it honey;

But when the sin ripens,

Then, indeed, he goes down into sorrow.

18. Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.

19. Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?

O wretched state! O bosom, black as death!
O limed soul, that struggling to be free,
Art more engaged!

20. Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?

21. Therefore this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instant.

22. His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.

23. He shall die without instruction; and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.

24. Yea, the light of the wicked shall be put out, and the spark of his fire shall not shine.

DARKNESS

GATHERS ABOUT THE SINNER

25. The steps of his strength shall be straitened, and his own counsel shall cast him down.

26. For the end of those things is death.

27. Woe be to them that know not their own misery, and a greater woe to them that love their miserable life.

28. The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings; they have made them crooked paths; whosoever goeth therein shall not find peace.

29. Destruction and misery are in their ways:

And the way of peace they have not known.

30. Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.

31. For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

32. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

33. Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell:
And in the lowest deep, a lower deep,
Still threatening to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.

CHAPTER V

FELLOWSHIP IN THE MORAL LIFE IS THE

WAY OF SALVATION

1. Infinite is the help man can yield to man. 2. A man is sufficient for himself; yet ten men, united in love, were capable of being and of doing

STRENGTH

FROM SPIRITUAL UNION

what ten thousand singly would fail in.

3. We must make ourselves great and strong again by association.

4. Like all other energy, spiritual power is contained in environment. Powerlessness is the normal state of every organism apart from its surroundings.

5. In contact with a large and bounteous environment its supply is limitless; in every direction its resources are infinite.

6. The power transcending all others which has influenced individuals and nations since time began, that power which is the convergence of the invisible, intangible, spiritual forces of all humanity, is public opinion.

THE GOOD PURIFY US

7. Even the mercifulness of one good man sounds like a voice of pardon from heaven; just as the power and the exclusion of men sound like a knell of hopelessness, and do actually bind the sin upon the soul.

8. The man whom society will not forgive nor restore is driven into recklessness.

9. In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand, and led them away from the City of Destruction.

But yet

10. We see no white-winged angels now. men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward, and the hand may be a little child's.

11. Blessed influence of one true human soul on another.

12. Ideas are often poor ghosts; they pass athwart us in thin vapour, and cannot make themselves felt.

13. But sometimes they are made flesh; they are clothed in a living human soul, with all its conflicts, its faith, and its love.

14. Then their presence is a power, then they shake us like a passion, and we are drawn after them with gentle compulsion, as flame is drawn to flame.

15. Surely, whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow,

As the water follows the moon, silently,

THE PURE

LIFT US UP

with fluid steps, anywhere around the globe.

16. It is easy with the great to be great.

17. The tidal wave of deeper souls

Into our inmost being rolls,

And lifts us unawares

Out of all meaner cares.

B

18. O what is heaven but the fellowship

Of minds that each can stand against the world
By its own meek and incorruptible will?

19. Forsooth, brothers, fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellowship is hell: fellowship is life, and lack of fellowship is death: and the deeds that ye do upon the earth, it is for fellowship's sake that ye do them.

20. Fellowship in devotion to the moral ideal is the source of sustained power and enthusiasm.

WE THIRST
FOR

SPIRITUAL

21. It is men's moral nature, longing to COMMUNION be fed and strengthened, that urges them into fellowship.

22. We are weary of the unreal and untrue existence we are forced to lead; we are weary of the emptiness of routine, weary of the false coin of reputation that passes current in the market of vanity fair.

23. We are weary of the low standards by which actions are judged, and to which, to our dismay, we perceive our actions insensibly conform.

24. But the pressure of social influence about us is enormous, and no single arm can resist it.

25. We must needs band together, then, if we would achieve a higher life.

26. We must create for ourselves a purer atmosphere if any rarer virtues are to flourish in our midst.

27. We must make our own public opinion, to buoy us up in every loftier aspiration.

28. Fellowships we want, that will hold, not religion as a duty, but duty as a religion.