we are obliged in the end to trust the universe and live
by faith. Therefore the awakened soul must often suffer perplexity,
share to the utmost the stress and anguish of the physical order; and,
chained as it is to a consciousness accustomed to respond to that order,
must still be content with flashes of understanding and willing to bear
long periods of destitution when the light is veiled.

The further it advances the more bitter will these periods of
destitution seem to it. It is not from the real men and women of the
Spirit that we hear soft things about the comfort of faith. For the true
life of faith gives everything worth having and takes everything worth
offering: with unrelenting blows it welds the self into the stuff of the
universe, subduing it to the universal purpose, doing away with the
flame of separation. Though joy and inward peace even in desolation are
dominant marks of those who have grown up into it, still it offers to
none a succession of supersensual delights. The life of the Spirit
involves the sublimation of that pleasure-pain rhythm which is
characteristic of normal consciousness, and if for it pleasure becomes
joy, pain becomes the Cross. Toil, abnegation, sacrifice, are therefore
of its essence; but these are not felt as a heavy burden, because they
are the expression of love. It entails a willed tension and choice, a
noble power of refusal, which are not entirely covered by being "in tune
with the Infinite." As our life comes to maturity we discover to our
confusion that human ears can pick up from the Infinite many
incompatible tunes, but cannot hear the whole symphony. And the melody
confided to our care, the one which we alone perhaps can contribute and
which taxes our powers to the full, has in it not only the notes of
triumph but the notes of pain. The distinctive mark therefore is not
happiness but vocation: work demanded and power given, but given only on
condition that we spend it and ourselves on others without stint. These
propositions, of course, are easily illustrated from history: but we can
also illustrate them in our own persons if we choose.

Should we choose this, and should life of the Spirit be achieved by
us--and it will only be done through daily discipline and attention to
the Spiritual, a sacrifice of comfort to its interests, following up the
intuition which sets us on the path--what benefits may we as ordinary
men expect it to bring to us and to the community that w