We know better where we are when we are forced to sift it.

It is the very great apparent advantage of recognised order that deceives us! When we lose that _apparent_ advantage, when we lose, too, the familiar names and symbols, and think, like children, that we have lost the reality they have expressed to us, a very low state of things _appears_ to result.
The strain and stress of life become much greater.

Ah! but, my friend, it is that strain and stress that shape us into the image of God." "You hinted, I think, that to your mind there was a more real obstacle, one peculiar to our age." Ever since I first met him I have been puzzled to know how it was that I often knew so nearly what Toyner meant when he only partially expressed his thought; he had this power over my understanding.

He was my master from the first.
He laid his hand now slightly upon my arm, as though to emphasise what he said.
"It is a little hard to explain it reverently," he said, "and still harder to understand why the difficulty should have come about, but in our day it would seem that the nights of prayer and the fresh intuition into the laws of God's working, which we see united in the life of our great Example, have become divorced.

It is their union again that we must have--that we shall have; but at present there is the difficulty for every man of us--the men who lead us in either path are different men and lead different ways.