The pleasures of sense gratify for a little while, but after the pleasures are over we feel bereft and empty. Outer pleasure is like moonlight: Sometimes it is very beautiful, but there is no element of growth in it. It does not help the power within us to come forth.

The silence is like the sun: it is always shining. It brings forth the best that is within us, the image and likeness of God that is waiting to be brought into activity, that will show itself after the fashion that God intended it should.

In the silence we get the wonderful inward joy that is of God. We see what the real is. Those who seek pleasure in the outer are in reality seeking eternal joy: the joy that no man can take away, the joy that Jesus Christ promised us, the joy that comes when we know what it means to be a child of God, when we know what the Father would have us know.

To help us forego outer pleasure for the inner joy, let us take a fitting word for meditation. Let us become willing to sacrifice the pleasures of the senses that are fleeting and unsatisfying; let us be willing to relinquish outer pleasures for the joy of Spirit --- the consciousness of the presence of the Father. Let us take this statement for meditation: I am willing to sacrifice the pleasures of sense that I may enter into the joys of Spirit.

In sacrificing the pleasures of sense for the