repent, and
sin again, but if in the end we live according to our best intuitions,
we shall be justified, and we need not worry about the outcome. To put
it another way, if we would have the untroubled mind, we must transfer
our conscientious efforts from the small details of life--from the worry
and fret of common things--into another and a higher atmosphere. We must
transfigure common life, dignify it and ennoble it; then, although the
old causes of worry may continue, we shall have gained a stature that
will make us unconscious masters of the little troubles and in a great
degree equal to the larger requirements. Life will be easier, not
because we make less effort, but because we are working from another and
a better level.

If such a change, and it would be a change for most of us, could come
about instantly, in a flash of revelation, that would be ideal, but it
would not be life. We must return again and again to the old uninspired
state wherein we struggle conscientiously with perverse details. I would
not minimize the importance and value of this struggle; only the sooner
it changes its level the better for every one concerned. Large serenity
must, finally, be earned through the toughening of moral fibre that
comes in dealing squarely with perplexing details. Some of this struggle
must always be going on, but serener life will come when we begin to
concern ourselves with larger factors.

How are we to live the larger life? Partly through uninspired struggle
and through the brave meeting of adversity, but partly, also, in a way
that may be described as "out of hand," by intuition, by exercise of the
quality of mind that sees visions and grasps truths beyond the realms of
common thought.

I am more and more impressed with the necessity of inspiration in life
if we are to be strong and serene, and so finally escape the pitfalls
of worry and conscience. By inspirations I do not mean belief in any
system or creed. It is not a stated belief that we need to begin with;
that may come in time. We need first to find in life, or at least in
nature, an essential beauty that makes its own true, inevitable response
within us. We must learn to love life so deeply that we feel its
tremendous significance, until we find in the sea and the sky the
evidence of an overbrooding spirit too great to be understood, but not
too great to satisfy the soul. This is a sort of mother religion--the
matrix from which all sects and creeds a