They have our life in them, but they're outside us and we're outside them, and so we get into the way, when we want them to be good, of giving them a punishment that's outside the harm they've done, and trying to put the harm they are going to do outside of their reach; and when they do the right thing, half the time we don't help them to do it again.

But that isn't God's way.

Nothing is ever outside of Him; and what happens after we have done a thing is just what must happen, nothing more and nothing less, so that we can never hope to escape the good or the evil of what we have done; for the way things must happen is just God's character that never changes.

You see the reason we can choose between right and wrong when a tree can't, or a beast, is just because God's power of choice is in us and not in them.
So we use His power, and when we use it right and think about pleasing Him--for, you see, we know He can be pleased, for our minds are just bits of His mind (as far as we know anything about Him; but of course we only know a very little)--He puts a tremendous lot of strength into us, so that we can go on doing right next time.

Of course it's a low sort of right when we don't think about Him, for that's the most of what He wants us to do; but I tell you" (a little personal fire and energy here broke the calm of the recital), "I tell you, when I do look up to God and say, '_Now I am going to do this for Your sake and because You are in me and will do it_,' I tell you, there's _tremendous power_ given us.
_That's the law that makes the value of religion_; I know it by the way I gave up drinking.