the air like snow or rain.  But in point of fact they do not do so; and if they did, they would no less have their origin in previous activities and be controlled by natural laws.  Rain and snow do drop from the air, but not without a long previous history.  They are the mature effects of former causes.  Equally so are Rest and Peace and Joy.  They, too, have each a previous history.  Storms and winds and calms are not accidents, but brought about by antecedent circumstances.  Rest and Peace are but calms in man’s inward nature, and arise through causes as definite and as inevitable.

Realize it thoroughly; it is a methodical, not an accidental world.  If a housewife turns out a good cake, it is the result of a sound receipt, carefully applied.  She cannot mix the assigned ingredients and fire them for the appropriate time without producing the result.  It is not she who has made the cake; it is nature.  She brings related things together; sets causes at work; these causes bring about the result.  She is not a creator, but an intermediary.  She does not expect random causes to produce specific effects—­random ingredients would only produce random cakes.  So it is in the making of Christian experiences.  Certain lines are followed; certain effects are the result.  These effects cannot but be the result.  But the result can never take place without the previous cause.  To expect results without antecedents is to expect cakes without ingredients.  That impossibility is precisely

          THE ALMOST UNIVERSAL EXPECTATION.

Now what I mainly wish to do is to help you firmly to grasp this simple principle of Cause and Effect in the spiritual world.  And instead of applying the principle generally to each of the Christian experiences in turn, I shall examine its application to one in some little detail.  The one I shall select is Rest.  And I think any one who follows the application in this single instance will be able to apply it for himself to all the others.

Take such a sentence as this:  African explorers are subject to fevers which cause restlessness and delirium.

Note the expression, “cause restlessness.” Restlessness has a cause. Clearly, then, any one who wished to get rid of restlessness would proceed at once to deal with the cause.  If that were not removed, a doctor might prescribe a hundred things, and all might be taken in turn, without producing the least effect.  Things are so arranged in the original planning of the world that certain effects must follow certain causes, and certain causes must be abolished before certain effects can be removed.  Certain parts of Africa are inseparably linked with the physical experience called fever; this fever is in turn infallibly linked with a mental experience called restlessness and delirium.  To abolish the mental experience the radical method would be to abolish the physical experience, and the way of abolishing the physical experience would be to abolish Africa, or to cease to go there.