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will then begin to live for others instead of for himself; will ad- just his thoughts and conduct to the 30 THROUGH THE GATE OF GOOD Principle of divine Love, instead of blindly following his selfish inclinations. However others act towards him, he will begin to act towards all in a calm, quiet, forgiving spirit.

If others attack his attitude, his beliefs, his religion, he will not retaliate, and will cease from attack- ing others, realizing that it is his supreme duty to carry out his divine Master's commands; and the carrying out of those commands will demand the readjustment, not only of his thoughts and acts, but of every detail of his life, even down to his eating and drinking and clothing. Аз he proceeds in this new life, the Teach- ings of Jesus will become luminous with a new light, vital with a new life, and he will feel that every precept is for him, and that he must carry them out, ceasing to accuse others because they do not carry them out.

As he reads the words “ Judge not," he will know that he must cease from all harsh and unkind judgment, that he must think kindly of all, just as much so of those who are unkind to him as of those who are kind to him; that if others judge and condemn him, he must not do 31 THROUGH THE GATE ОЕ GOOD so to them, and, putting aside all personal considerations, must deal with them in the spirit of equity, wisdom, and love.

It will thus be seen that even in carrying out the one simple precept, “ Judge not,” a man must necessarily rise above much that is merely personal and selfish, and will develop unusual spiritual strength. This course of conduct, diligently pur- sued, will lead to the observance of the precept, “Resist not evil,” for if a man ceases to judge others as evil, he will cease to resist them as evil.

Of late years much has been written about non-resist- ance to evil, but he who would compre- hend the spiritual significance of this, or indeed of any precept, must not rest con- tent with mere dialectic definitions of it, but must assiduously practise it; he can only find its meaning by doing й.

And in the doing of this precept, a man will destroy i in himsel the eye of evil, and in its place he will learn to look through the eye of good, the eye of Truth, when he will see that evil is not worth resisting, and that the practice of the good is supremely excellent. 32 THROUGH THE GATE OF GOOD Whilst a man is engaged in resisting evil, he is not only not practising the good, he is actually involved in the like passion and prejudice which he condemns in ап- other, and as a direct result of his attitude of mind, he himself is resisted by others as evil.

Resist a man, a party, a law, a religion, a government as evil, and you yourself will be resisted as evil. He who considers it as a great evil that he should be persecuted and condemned, let him cease to persecute and condemn. Let him turn away from all that he has hither- to regarded as evil, and begin to look for the good, taking passion, resentment, and retaliation out of his heart, and he will very soon see that what he has all along been resisting as evil has no existence as such, and that it was merely an exagger- ated and illusionary reflection of the pas- sion and folly which were in himself.

So deep and far-reaching is this precept that the practice of it will take a man far up the heights of spiritual knowledge and attainment; and when, by following its demands, he has so far purified and over- come himself as to see good and not evil 33 THROUGH THE GATE OF GOOD in all men and all things, he will then be prepared to carry out a still higher pre- cept (though one contained in the primary precept), namely, “ Love your enemies.”

Over none of the precepts do men stumble more than this one, and the cause for such stumbling is near at hand and very plain. It is to be expected that men who regard fighting, retaliation, and hatred towards their enemies as indica- tions of nobility of character should look upon this precept as not only an imprac- ticable but a very foolish command.

And from their standpoint of knowledge they are right. If man be regarded as a mere animal cut off from the Divine, those fierce, destructive qualities which are esteemed noble in the beast, are noble in man. To such men, living in their animal qualities and instincts, meekness, forgive- ness, and self-denying love appear as cowardice, effeminacy, and weak senti- mentality.