e serve? It will
certainly bring into life new zest and new meaning; a widening of the
horizon and consciousness of security; a fresh sense of joys to be had
and of work to be done. The real spiritual consciousness is positive and
constructive in type: it does not look back on the past sins and
mistakes of the individual or of the community, but in its other-world
faith and this-world charity is inspired by a forward-moving spirit of
hope. Seeking alone the honour of Eternal Beauty, and because of its
invulnerable sense of security, it is adventurous. The spiritual man and
woman can afford to take desperate chances, and live dangerously in the
interests of their ideals; being delivered from the many unreal fears
and anxieties which commonly torment us, and knowing the unimportance of
possessions and of so-called success. The joy which waits on
disinterested love and the confidence which follows surrender, cannot
fail them. Moreover, the inward harmony and assurance, the consciousness
of access to that Spirit who is in a literal sense "health's eternal
spring" means a healing of nervous miseries, and invigoration of the
usually ill-treated mind and body, and so an all-round increase in
happiness and power.

"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." This, said St. Paul,
who knew by experience the worlds of grace and of nature, is what a
complete man ought to be like. Compare this picture of an equable and
fully harmonized personality with that of a characteristic neurasthenic,
a bored sensualist, or an embittered worker, concentrated on the
struggle for a material advantage: and consider that the central
difference between these types of human success and human failure abides
in the presence or absence of a spiritual conception of life. We do not
yet know the limits of the upgrowth into power and happiness which
complete and practical surrender to this conception can work in us; or
what its general triumph might do for the transformation of the world.
And it may even be that beyond the joy and renewal which come from
self-conquest and unification, a level of spiritual life most certainly
open to all who will really work for it; and beyond that deeper insight,
more widespreading love, and perfection of adjustment to the
here-and-now which we recognize and reverence as the privilege of the
pure in heart--beyond all these, it may be that life still reser