Love itself can accomplish without our willing co-operation; that the heavenly life cannot be forced upon us nor into us by almighty power, but can only be wrought out by our own volition—or built up through struggle and conflict and self-denial and obedience to the laws of that life,—the Lord meanwhile "working in us to will and to do of his good pleasure"; and that unless we begin to live the life of heaven here on earth—begin to deny self, take up the cross and follow the Master—we shall have no desire to engage in this work in the realm beyond the grave. The heaven of our minds will then be closed in tender compassion for us; and the peace and joy and unutterable bliss of heaven will, therefore, never be ours.
So tremendous are the moral sanctions with which this new doctrine is invested! So benign and quickening is it in its practical tendency!
