ite: 'The Son of God,' he says, 'was manifest
that he might destroy the works of the Devil,' and St. Paul, mindful of
the inner subtleties of the conflict, warns his readers that Satan has
changed his tactics and has transformed himself into an angel of light.
I am not sure that we have gained greatly by letting our notions of
spiritual life grow dim and abstract. Perhaps for this very reason the
rebellious, negative, designing spirit that is so prone to invade the
hearts of us all is the more free to gain a foot-hold and go about
controlling the tone of our life. There is real advantage in bringing
the large issues of life to a point where not only our mind but, as it
were, our senses, can lay hold on them. It is the impulse of
simple-minded men like those early disciples, and if we continue
straight-seeing we do not outgrow it. What makes these views of life so
deep is not that they are less simple than those of others, but that
they are more simple. To St. John the reality that has come to win the
world is not the promise of salvation, or prophecy of an eventual life
eternal, but just life without modification or limitation, life
absolute, full-orbed, pulsating through worlds seen and unseen alike. 'I
am the Life,' he makes Christ say, not, 'I am working to secure it.' St.
John it is who preserves to us that conception of eating the Flesh and
drinking the Blood of the Son of Man. No philosopher in the world, we
may roundly say, would ever have put it so, and yet how effectually is
thus revealed what it means to get the power of the new life thoroughly
incorporated with our blood and breath. He it is who identifies the most
inner values of life with the simplest acts and experiences, reducing it
to terms of eating bread and drinking water, and walking in daylight,
and bearing fruit like the branches of a vine and following like sheep
the voice of a shepherd, and entering a door and finding pasture."

Let us cease trying materialistic and intellectual means for supplying
the power to live the spiritual life and let us each one establish the
needful relationship with the true source of power. May our time not be
likened to the Oriental traveler, who, appreciating the convenience and
force of electricity as seen in a room he occupied, fitted his palace,
on his return, with a set of elaborate fixtures and was surprised to
find no illumination therefrom! We are torches who can not shine in
themselves, but who, when connecte