economy of Heaven with my poor
prayers and confessions. I try to think of my shortcomings, therefore, as
merely the incidents of an eternal growth. I shall outlive them all in the
course of time, quite naturally, perennially, as the trees outlive the
blight of winter and put forth each year a new greenness of aspiring
leaves. I dare not say that I know God, and I will not believe some
doctrines taught concerning Him; but I keep within the principle of life
and follow as best I can the natural order of things. And for the most
part I feel as logically related to the divine order as the flowers are to
the seasons. I know that if this really is His world,

should the chosen guide
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way.

Are you shocked, dear Shadow, at such a creed of sun and dust?--you, a
dishoused soul, wandering like a vagrant ghost along life's green edge?
After all, I doubt if I am so far behind you in spiritual experience. The
difference is, I have two heavens, that orthodox one of my imagination,
and this real heaven-earth of which I am so nearly a part. But you have
forced the doors of mystery and escaped before your time. And you can
never return to the old dust-and-daisy communion with nature, yet you are
appalled at the loneliness and the terrible sacrifices made by a man in
your situation. Your spiritual ambition has outstripped your courage. You
are an adventurer, rather than an earnest pilgrim to Mecca.

And yet day after day as I have weathered farther and farther back in the
church, like a little white boat with all my sails reefed to meet the
gospel storm of damnation that has been raging from the pulpit, I have
thought of you and your Indian philosophy, by way of contrast, almost as a
haven of refuge. Our religion seems to me to have almost the limitations
of personality. There can be no other disciples but Christian disciples.
Our ethics are bounded by doctrines and dogmas. But, whether Buddhist or
Christian, the final test of initiation is always the same--"All things
pass away, work out your own salvation with diligence," "Die to the
world," "Present your bodies a living sacrifice"--and you would not make
these final renunciations. You "turned back to seek the beautiful things
of the eye." Well, if one is only wise enough to know what the really
beautiful things are, it is as good a way as any to spin up to God.
Meanwhile