lete reconstruction of personality; a
personality that has generally grown into the wrong shape. This is
likely to be a hard and painful business; and indeed history assures us
that it is, and further that the spiritual life is never achieved by
taking the line of least resistance and basking in the divine light.
With world-refusal, then, is intimately connected stern moral conflict;
often lasting for years, and having as its object the conquest of
selfhood in all its insidious forms. "Take one step out of yourself,"
say the S[=u]fis, "and you will arrive at God."[57] This one step is the
most difficult act of life; yet urged by love, man has taken it again
and again. This phase is so familiar to every reader of spiritual
biography, that I need not insist upon it. "In the field of this body,"
says Kabir, "a great war goes forward, against passion, anger, pride and
greed. It is in the Kingdom of Truth, Contentment and Purity that this
battle is raging, and the sword that rings forth most loudly is the
sword of His Name."[58] "Man," says Boehme, "must here be at war with
himself if he wishes to be a heavenly citizen ... fighting must be the
watchword, not with tongue and sword, but with mind and spirit; and not
to give over."[59] The need of such a conflict, shown to us in history,
is explained on human levels by psychology. On spiritual levels it is
made plain to all whose hearts are touched by the love of God. By this
way all must pass who achieve the life of the Spirit; subduing to its
purposes their wayward wills, and sublimating in its power their
conflicting animal impulses. This long effort brings, as its reward a
unification of character, an inflow of power: from it we see the mature
man or woman of the Spirit emerge. In St. Catherine of Genoa this
conflict lasted for four years, after which the thought of sin ceased to
rule her consciousness.[60] St. Teresa's intermittent struggles are
said to have continued for thirty years. John Wesley, always deeply
religious, did not attain the inner stability he calls assurance till he
was thirty-five years old. Blake was for twenty years in mental
conflict, shut off from the sources of his spiritual life. So slowly do
great personalities come to their full stature, and subdue their
vigorous impulses to the one ruling idea.

The ending of this conflict, the self's unification and establishment in
the new life, commonly means a return more or less complete to that
world from