oclaim him such, for every tree is known by its
fruits."[195]

[195] Speculum Perfectionis, ed. P. Sabatier, Paris, 1898, pp. 10, 13.

But beyond this more worthily athletic attitude involved in doing and
being, there is, in the desire of not having, something profounder
still, something related to that fundamental mystery of religious
experience, the satisfaction found in absolute surrender to the larger
power. So long as any secular safeguard is retained, so long as any
residual prudential guarantee is clung to, so long the surrender is
incomplete, the vital crisis is not passed, fear still stands sentinel,
and mistrust of the divine obtains: we hold by two anchors, looking to
God, it is true, after a fashion, but also holding by our proper
machinations. In certain medical experiences we have the same critical
point to overcome. A drunkard, or a morphine or cocaine maniac, offers
himself to be cured. He appeals to the doctor to wean him from his
enemy, but he dares not face blank abstinence. The tyrannical drug is
still an anchor to windward: he hides supplies of it among his
clothing; arranges secretly to have it smuggled in in case of need.
Even so an incompletely regenerate man still trusts in his own
expedients. His money is like the sleeping potion which the
chronically wakeful patient keeps beside his bed; he throws himself on
God, but IF he should need the other help, there it will be also.
Every one knows cases of this incomplete and ineffective desire for
reform-drunkards whom, with all their self-reproaches and resolves, one
perceives to be quite unwilling seriously to contemplate NEVER being
drunk again! Really to give up anything on which we have relied, to
give it up definitely, "for good and all" and forever, signifies one of
those radical alterations of character which came under our notice in
the lectures on conversion. In it the inner man rolls over into an
entirely different position of equilibrium, lives in a new centre of
energy from this time on, and the turning-point and hinge of all such
operations seems usually to involve the sincere acceptance of certain
nakednesses and destitutions.

Accordingly, throughout the annals of the saintly life, we find this
ever-recurring note: Fling yourself upon God's providence without
making any reserve whatever--take no thought for the morrow--sell all
you have and give it to the poor--only when the sacrifice is ruthless
and reckless will th