reached -- shall "be counted unto us for righteousness." Persistence of right motive, however lacking we may in present knowledge, brings us continually and surely nearer to that self-dominion and selfless love which is God's kingdom come. Our days are increased instead of lessened, for we are ascending to the unlimited and eternal instead of the descended to the limited and the temporal.

Raphael's attempt to be rid of the talisman, and refusal to believe longer in its power to shorten his promised happiness, its finding its way back to him after he has thrown it into the well, and his subsequent efforts to destroy it, illustrate the impossibility of breaking asunder that great law, Cause and Effect; as also the blindness of the lesser soul which does not see that co-operation with this law is the defeat of what that soul calls fate. Dow what he would, he could not rid himself of it, for he strove to put it away from him instead of growing away from it, instead of becoming the quality of soul over which it could have no power.

God's law is the law of cause and effect. "As a man soweth, so shall he reap." From the seed sown by the soul it must gather its harvest. This law is omnipotent or overruling; and because it can be depended upon absolutely, we govern the results as absolutely -- not reaping, but what the reaping shall be to us; whether we gather the harvest as its master who saves the wheat and destroys the tares, or