Though there is not conscious hostility in it, the root of it is a sub-
conscious sense of discordance with God and of antagonism between His
will and the man's When we are quite sure that we love another, and that
hearts beat in accord and wills go out towards the same things, we do
not need to make efforts to think of that other, but our minds turn
towards him or her as to a home, whenever released from the holding-
back force of necessary occupations. If we love God, and have our will
set to do His will, our thoughts will fly to Him, 'as doves to their
windows.'

It is fed by preoccupation of thought with other things. We have but a
certain limited amount of energy of thought or attention, and if we
waste it, as much as most of us do, on 'things seen and temporal,' there
is none left for the unseen realities and the God who is 'eternal,
invisible.' It is often reinforced by theoretical uncertainty, sometimes
real, often largely unreal. But after all, the true basis of it is, what
Paul gives as its cause, 'they did not _like_ to retain God in their
knowledge.'

The criminality of this indifference! It is heartlessly ungrateful. Dogs
lick the hand that feeds them; ox and ass in their dull way recognise
something almost like obligation arising from benefits and care. No
ingratitude is meaner and baser than that of which we are guilty, if we
do not requite Him 'in whose hands our breath is, and whose are all our
ways,' by even one thankful heart-throb or one word shaped out of the
breath that He gives.

IV. This attitude is fatal.