t love. A spiritual fussiness--often a material
fussiness too--seems to be taking the place of that inward resort to the
fontal sources of our being which is the true religious act, our chance
of contact with the Spirit. This compensating beat of the fully lived
human life, that whole side of existence resumed in the word
contemplation, has been left out. "All the artillery of the world," said
John Everard, "were they all discharged together at one clap, could not
more deaf the ears of our bodies than the clamourings of desires in the
soul deaf its ears, so you see a man must go into the silence, or else
he cannot hear God speak."[40] And until we remodel our current
conception of the Christian life in such a sense as to give that silence
and its revelation their full value, I do not think that we can hope to
exhibit the triumphing power of the Spirit in human character and human
society. Our whole notion of life at present is such as to set up
resistances to its inflow. Yet the inner mood, the consciousness, which
makes of the self its channel, are accessible to all, if we would but
believe this and act on our belief. "Worship," said William Penn, "is
the supreme act of a man's life."[41] And what is worship but a
reach-out of the finite spirit towards Infinite Life? Here thought must
mend the breach which thought has made: for the root of our trouble
consists in the fact that there is a fracture in our conception of God
and of our relation with Him. We do not perceive the "hidden unity in
the Eternal Being"; the single nature and purpose of that Spirit which
brought life forth, and shall lead it to full realization.

Here is our little planet, chiefly occupied, to our view, in rushing
round the sun; but perhaps found from another angle to fill quite
another part in the cosmic scheme. And on this apparently unimportant
speck, wandering among systems of suns, the appearance of life and its
slow development and ever-increasing sensitization; the emerging of pain
and of pleasure; and presently man with his growing capacity for
self-affirmation and self-sacrifice, for rapture and for grief. Love
with its unearthly happiness, unmeasured devotion, and limitless pain;
all the ecstasy, all the anguish that we extract from the rhythm of life
and death. It is much, really, for one little planet to bring to birth.
And presently another music, which some--not many perhaps yet, in
comparison with its population--are able to hear. Th