The Pilgrim's Rule
The Interior Kingdom
Learning to Govern the Soul
Book II
The kingdom of God is within you.
No man can faithfully govern his life until he has first learned to govern himself.
Introduction
The pilgrim has now learned to read the first lessons written by the Creator into the body and the visible world.
He has discovered that hunger teaches desire, thirst teaches grace, labor teaches charity, sleep teaches trust, wounds teach repentance, and even death points beyond itself to the eternal homeland.
Yet these lessons, though learned from creation, were never meant to remain outside of him.
They must descend into the heart.
For the greatest battlefield is not found in the marketplace, nor upon the field of war, nor even within the tumults of the world.
It is found within the soul itself.
There thoughts contend with truth.
Desires struggle against reason.
Memory recalls both blessings and injuries.
The will chooses either obedience or rebellion.
The conscience speaks with quiet firmness, while the passions often cry out for immediate satisfaction.
Here the true victory of the pilgrim is won or lost.
Many men desire to reform the world before they have learned to govern themselves.
They seek to correct the faults of others while leaving their own hearts untended.
But the wisdom of God begins otherwise.
The Creator first calls each soul to interior order.
Only then does He entrust it with greater labors.
As a well-governed kingdom enjoys peace because each part fulfills its proper office, so the soul flourishes when every faculty is rightly ordered beneath the sovereignty of God.
Reason is enlightened by faith.
The will is strengthened by grace.
The passions become obedient to virtue.
The body serves the soul.
The soul serves God.
This is the order established in the beginning.
This is the order disturbed by sin.
This is the order restored through Jesus Christ.
The chapters that follow do not teach the pilgrim how to conquer nations.
They teach him something far more difficult.
They teach him, by the grace of God, to become master of himself, that he may belong wholly to Christ.
For no earthly kingdom can compare with the quiet victory of a soul that has learned to live under the gentle and perfect rule of its Creator.