And so this idea of postponement, of evading, is also giving panic in the hearts of people who are attempting to do it; for of old there was a time to forget the sowing and be surprised at the reaping when it finally came. This time is past. Man lives vitally, under the shadow of his causes and his effects at all times. He cannot drink, cannot quaff the glass of forgetfulness today as he once could, for he is alive and knows he lives and moves and has his being when asleep, when awake. He knows he is busy in his sleeping hours even as he is busy in his waking hours; he knows that sowing and tilling and reaping are going on all at the same time, continually, eternally, perpetually; and the consciousness is wakening that sees before, behind, above and beneath; and as this awakening is coming, the agony of false living in intensified, is growing more and more keen.

There are two reasons for living the life of virtue, of love, of truth - from cowardice and from intelligence. One should be prompted to live the higher, nobler life. For if the man casts about, if he recognizes quality, the characteristics and habits of the inmates of all the houses of misery, all the institutions of restraint; if he will but see, he can read as he runs, the penalties of perverted living. If he will look, if he will listen, if he will feel that the lives that are successful, the lives that are satisfied, the lives that have love in their hearts, love in their homes, success, health and beauty, the lives that are an out-picturing of symmetrical poise and development and growth; are always the lives of those who are living more true to their nature; of those who are living out from their center instead of adopting from foreign sources and donning the cloaks of others and pretending. The lives who are really ascending to the monarchy, who are really ascending to brood over and guide and uplift, to alleviate the sorrows and suffering of the earth, are those brave souls who are just living out their natures.

Their love pours forth on humanity, their compassion flows over, and humanity trusts it, turns to it, because God’s will is their will, and their is at one with their Divine Nature, because they are aspiring to higher and nobler things. God and all of his angels, and all of his manifestation sustain, support, preserve, uphold, advance and aid that life that has chosen the course of onward, upward and forward evolution.

But observe the souls who are postponing their judgment day, observe the souls that are trying to hide under another's cloak; who are trying to borrow staff after staff, those souls who are letting themselves grow more and more in debt, who are gathering interest, compound interest more and more (and there is no evading, there is no avoiding, there is no escape). The is-ness of the law is! Observe these beings; the pitiful conditions that surround their lives. Never secure, they are never fully satisfied, they are never joying, they never have a moment of unalloyed joy; they trust not themselves, they believe not in themselves, and they draw not the trust to them, or the belief in them from others. They draw not love from others. Like begets like. They do not deserve it, they do not win it. The pity of their declining years! And yet, there is never a day to late to begin. There is never a day when one cannot begin to redeem himself. There is never a day when an attempt at redemption does not bring a reward Remember virtue and reward are inseparable.

The soul who begins to love his ideals, who resolves to become true to himself and begins to live out his nature into expression, begins to fan this glow, this light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He begins to hear the still small voice that leads him out of the labyrinth, the maze. He begins to feel that security of an answer from within, that shows him the way out of all these conditions, that brings him up to the courage of bearing his cross, to the full desire to meet and dispatch and master conditions that he may have brought around him. There were once fetters, were once locks which he could not break; now they begin to be stepping stones and mounting blocks. Now in his old weaknesses and failures, he begins to see the things he would not be. He sees in them such things as these. He in poverty, the ideal opposite abundance; sees in sickness and helplessness the reminder that health and power are his nature’s to claim: sees in hunger the reminder that food is to be obtained; sees all of these old conditions and that he can make mounting blocks on which he ascends to liberty; not to escape, but to master. Escape is but to delay, to heap up interest to be paid at a later date,

There is a certain compromise for this soul that has great desire but not yet courage to live up to his ideals, and it is this that he can begin to live from within outward. He need not announce, “I was false yesterday when I said this or that.” He can resolve from within, "I will speak that no more." He need not go forth and say, ‘"Forgive me; I did wrong or I did that wrong”; but he can turn within himself and declare, "I shall commit it no more; I shall make amends the first opportunity I have; I shall speak for truth, love, and express the highest, instead of what I used to express”.

All the forgiveness in God’s whole universe is the self-forgiveness: it is not something that is to be: given: it is for-given; it is already given to him to be released from his debts as fast as he pays them; as fast as he resolves to live to the higher and purer and more beautiful ideals. I do declare that opportunities for this living will be granted him as soon as he identifies himself steadfastly and persistently with preference for something higher, so surely will he begin to function and create a vibration corresponding to that condition he has identified his mind and ideals with, and so surely. if he holds this ideal, instead of the old ideal of crucifixion and self-condemnation and torture, he can look with the purest and most steadfast eye unto the eye of the true one.

After he has resolved to be true, shame does not come to his cheek and humility to his mind; because he has resolved to forego ill doing; and self-respect, selfreliance, self-confidence and assurance that prompt him to walk with angels will come to the man who sees that he has been unwise, that he has been foolish, that he has used the attributes of his Divinity in a perverted way, that he has misused his nature, indeed of expressing it naturally.