spirit of intensest and humble adoration that generous souls yield
themselves to the drawing of that mysterious Beauty and unchanging Love,
with all that it entails. But the form which the impulse to surrender
takes will vary with the psychic make-up of the individual. To some it
will come as a sense of vocation, a making-over of the will to the
purposes of the Kingdom; a type of consecration which may not be overtly
religious, but may be concerned with the self-forgetting quest of
social excellence, of beauty, or of truth. By some it will be felt as an
illumination of the mind, which now discerns once for all true values,
and accepting these, must uphold and strive for them in the teeth of all
opportunism. By some--and these are the most blessed--as a breaking and
re-making of the heart. Whatever the form it takes, the extent in which
the self experiences the peace, joy and power of living at the level of
Spirit will depend on the completeness and singlemindedness of this, its
supreme act of self-simplification. Any reserves, anything in its
make-up which sets up resistances--and this means generally any form of
egotism--will mar the harmony of the process. And on the other hand,
such a real simplification of the self's life as is here
demanded--uniting on one object, the intellect, will and feeling too
often split among contradictory attractions--is itself productive of
inner harmony and increased power: productive too of that noble
endurance which counts no pain too much in the service of Reality.

Here then we come to the fact, valid for every level of spiritual life,
which lies behind all the declarations concerning surrender, self-loss,
dying to live, dedication, made by writers on this theme. All involve a
relaxing of tension, letting ourselves go without reluctance in the
direction in which we are most profoundly drawn; a cessation of our
struggles with the tide, our kicks against the pricks that spur us on.
The inward aim of the self is towards unification with a larger life; a
mergence with Reality which it may describe under various contradictory
symbols, or may not be able to describe at all, but which it feels to be
the fulfilment of existence. It has learnt--though this knowledge may
not have passed beyond the stage of feeling--that the universe is one
simple texture, in which all things have their explanation and their
place. Combing out the confusions which enmesh it, losing its sham and
separate life a