nd finding its true life there, it will know what to love
and how to act. The goal of this process, which has been called entrance
into the freedom of the Will of God, is the state described by the
writer of the "German Theology" when he said "I would fain be to the
Eternal Goodness what his own hand is to a man."[145] For such a
declaration not only means a willed and skilful working for God, a
practical siding with Perfection, becoming its living tool, but also
close union with, and sharing of, the vital energy of the spiritual
order: a feeding on and using of its power, its very life blood;
complete docility to its inward direction, abolition of separate desire.
The surrender is therefore made not in order that we may become limp
pietists, but in order that we may receive more energy and do better
work: by a humble self-subjection more perfectly helping forward the
thrust of the Spirit and the primal human business of incarnating the
Eternal here and now. Its justification is in the arduous but untiring,
various but harmonious, activities that flow from it: the enhancement of
life which it entails. It gives us access to our real sources of power;
that we may take from them and, spending generously, be energized anew.

So the cord on which those events which make up the personal life of the
Spirit are to be strung is completed, and we see that it consists of
four strands. Two are dispositions of the self; Penitence and Surrender.
Two are activities; inward Recollection and outward Work. All four make
stern demands on its fortitude and goodwill. And each gives strength to
the rest: for they are not to be regarded as separate and successive
states, a discrete series through which we must pass one by one, leaving
penitence behind us when we reach surrendered love; but as the variable
yet enduring and inseparable aspects of one rich life, phases in one
complete and vital effort to respond more and more closely to Reality.

Nothing, perhaps, is less monotonous than the personal life of the
Spirit. In its humility and joyous love, its adoration and its industry,
it may find self-expression in any one of the countless activities of
the world of time. It is both romantic and austere, both adventurous and
holy. Full of fluctuation and unearthly colour, it yet has its dark
patches as well as its light. Since perfect proof of the supersensual is
beyond the span of human consciousness, the element of risk can never
be eliminated: