It is because man is so idle, so indisposed to assume or accept responsibility, that he falls back upon this temporary makeshift of a creator.  It is temporary indeed, for it can only last during the activity of the particular brain power which finds its place among us.  When the man drops this mental life behind him, he of necessity leaves with it its magic lantern and the pleasant illusions he has conjured up by its aid.  That must be a very uncomfortable moment, and must produce a sense of nakedness not to be approached by any other sensation.  It would seem as well to save one’s self this disagreeable experience by refusing to accept unreal phantasms as things of flesh and blood and power.  Upon the shoulders of the Creator man likes to thrust the responsibility not only of his capacity for sinning and the possibility of his salvation, but of his very life itself, his very consciousness.  It is a poor Creator that he thus contents himself with,—­one who is pleased with a universe of puppets, and amused by pulling their strings.  If he is capable of such enjoyment, he must yet be in his infancy.  Perhaps that is so, after all; the God within us is in his infancy, and refuses to recognise his high estate.  If indeed the soul of man is subject to the laws of growth, of decay, and of re-birth as to its body, then there is no wonder at its blindness.  But this is evidently not so; for the soul of man is of that order of life which causes shape and form, and is unaffected itself by these things,—­of that order of life which like the pure, the abstract flame burns wherever it is lit.  This cannot be changed or affected by time, and is of its very nature superior to growth and decay.  It stands in that primeval place which is the only throne of God,—­that place whence forms of life emerge and to which they return.  That place is the central point of existence, where there is a permanent spot of life as there is in the midst of the heart of man.  It is by the equal development of that,—­first by the recognition of it, and then by its equal development upon the many radiating lines of experience,—­that man is at last enabled to reach the Golden Gate and lift the latch.  The process is the gradual recognition of the god in himself; the goal is reached when that godhood is consciously restored to its right glory.

III

The first thing which it is necessary for the soul of man to do in order to engage in this great endeavor of discovering true life is the same thing that the child first does in its desire for activity in the body,—­he must be able to stand.  It is clear that the power of standing, of equilibrium, of concentration, of uprightness, in the soul, is a quality of a marked character.  The word that presents itself most readily as descriptive of this quality is “confidence.”