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254 dead. It is "in Him" that "we live, move, and have our being." No created being is or can be, properly speaking, endowed with life. By an endowment, we understand a gift which the receiver holds in a manner separately from the giver,—something which, once bestowed, the receiver holds in his own possession. All that man can be said to be endowed with (though indeed he can hold nothing in absolute separation from his Maker) is faculties,—organs mental and physical, so formed as to be capable of receiving life, as it is ceaselessly communicated from Him who is its sole fountain. An image of this great spiritual truth may be seen in nature. The earth, for instance, receives light and heat perpetually from the Sun: there is no such thing as endowing the earth with light and heat: it is merely endowed with organisms,—material faculties, so to speak—capable of receiving the light and heat as they flow in from the sun. So there is no such thing as endowing man's eye with light: the eye is merely an organism, so formed as to be able to receive the light as it flows in. Now, in a manner precisely analogous,—man's mental eye, his understanding, has no light of truth in itself; it is merely a spiritual organism, so formed as to be capable of receiving such light as it flows in, each instant, from God. So, his will is a spiritual organism, so made as to be capable of receiving spiritual heat or love from God: the will has no warmth or love or feeling, in or of itself, any more than the earth has heat of itself without the sun. And just as the earth, by turning away from the sun, makes its own night and its own winter, so man, by averting his mind and heart from God, creates his own mental darkness and cold, produces his own states of