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288 by living consistent with that prayer. If selfishness gives place in us to Love, we shall love our neighbor and bless them that curse us, but can never meet this great demand by asking for it; there is a cross to be taken up, before the reward is given.

Do we “love the Lord our God with all our heart, Soul, and strength?” This includes much, even the surrender of all personal affections and personal worship; it is the ultimate of being, the science of Life that recognizes only the consciousness, Spirit, wherein Soul is our Master, and sense without a claim. Are you willing to leave all for Christ, Truth, and be reckoned with sinners? Have you reached this point? No. Do you really desire to attain it? No. Then wherefore make long prayers about it, and ask to become Christ-like, when these are the footsteps of our dear Master; if unwilling to drink his cup, wherefore pray with the lips to be partakers of it? The only consistent prayer is, to do right so far as we understand the right, and to walk in the light so far as we receive it, even though it be with bleeding footsteps, and let our real desires and works be rewarded by the Father who seeth in secret. The whole world will not understand Christianity for centuries to come. When we are good enough to take His cup of earthly sorrows, we shall have it, and until we are, and do drink of it, all the vain repetitions that heathen use can never reach the demonstration that Jesus gave and instructed his followers to give, as the test of Christianity, saying, “And these signs shall follow you.” We learn in science the necessity for Christians to suffer in this wicked world of sense, insomuch as they oppose it, and are