But a Law which allows us to be ourselves is Perfect Liberty, and thus we get back to St James' statement that the Perfect Law is the Law of Liberty.

Obviously it is not Liberty to allow ourselves to be depressed into such a mental attitude of submission to every form and degree of misery as coming to us "by the will of God" that we at last reach a condition of apathy in which one blow more or less makes very little difference. Such teaching is based on the Devil's beatitude --- "Blessed are they that expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed" --- but that is not the Gospel of Deliverance which Jesus preached in his first discourse in the synagogue of Nazareth. Jesus' teaching was not the deification of suffering, but the fullness of Joy; and he emphatically declared that all bondage --- everything which keeps us from enjoying our life to the full --- is the working of that Power of the Negative which the Bible calls the Devil. To give up hope and regard ourselves as the sport of an inexorable fate is not Liberty. It is not obedience to a higher power, but abject submission to a lower --- the power of ignorance, unintelligence, and negation.

Harmony or Pandemonium?

Perfect Liberty is the consciousness that we are not thus bound by any power of evil but that, on the contrary, we are centres in which the Creative Spirit of the Universe finds particular expression. Then we are in harmony with its continual progressive movement towards still more perfect modes of