Are you not often a mystery to yourself? Warm one moment- cold the next! Abasing yourself one hour- exalting yourself the following! Loving the world, full of it, steeped up to your head in it today- crying, groaning and sighing for a sweet manifestation of the love of God tomorrow! Brought down to nothingness, covered with shame and confusion, on your knees before you leave your room- filled with pride and self-importance before you have gotten down the stairs! Despising the world and willing to give it all up for one taste of the love of Jesus when in solitude and trying to grasp with both hands when in business! But the mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven is this- that our carnal mind undergoes no alteration but maintains a perpetual war with Grace. And thus, the deeper we sink in self-abasement under a sense of our vileness, the higher we rise in a knowledge of Christ and the blacker we are in our own view- the more lovely does Jesus appear.