"No! I shall some day, as Eberstein is training me. But you can't hurry the hour and you can't delay the hour. You have just to wait."
"It requires immense patience."
"Immense," assented Douglas, "but if you want a big thing you have to do big things to get it. Only by living the life of Christ can you attain to the Christ-like powers. Love, purity, unselfishness, serenity, kindness of thought and word and action: these things arouse the latent faculties which, inherent in every man, enable him to come into contact with other worlds. These are the laws of the Kingdom of Heaven by which one acquires the powers."
Julian thought for a few moments. "I had a talk with Narvaez the other day," he said after a pause, "and he offered to cast my horoscope. He seems, so far as I can judge in my limited way, to have powers beyond the reach of the ordinary man. Does he practise love and unselfishness and all the rest of the necessary requirements?"
"No!" said Montrose decidedly. "I don't think Narvaez is a good man, although I have no positive reason to say that he is a bad one. But an evil man—I am not speaking of Don Pablo, understand—can gain some of the power of the Kingdom by sheer force of will. Christ says: 'He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber!' So those who get in otherwise than through Christ the Door of the sheep—the door of love, that is—are the evil people who acquire super-physical powers by strength of will, and make use of them selfishly. It is black magic to do that. But those who follow the Master and enter through Him, as the Door, by living the prescribed life to which I have referred, get the powers. But these use them for the benefit of others and not to aggrandise themselves. That is white magic."
"It seems strange to use the word 'magic' in connection with Christ."
"The word has become polarised," said Montrose indifferently, "you can call anything that happens by working an unknown law of Nature 'a miracle,' or 'a wonder,' or 'a magical performance.' The one who performs such exceptional things, of course, can exercise the unknown law I speak of."
"Christ, being superhuman, could," argued Hardwick seriously, "because He had wisdom without measure. But the ordinary man——"