This realization of ourselves as we truly are—­emerging with difficulty from our animal origin, tinctured through and through with the self-regarding tendencies and habits it has imprinted on us—­this realization or self-knowledge, is Humility; the only soil in which the spiritual life can germinate.  And modern man with his great horizons, his ever clearer vision of his own close kinship with life’s origin, his small place in the time-stream, in the universe, in God’s hand, the relative character of his best knowledge and achievement, is surely everywhere being persuaded to this royal virtue.  Recognition of this his true creaturely status, with its obligations—­the only process of pain and struggle needed if the demands of generous love are ever to be fulfilled in him and his many-levelled nature is to be purified and harmonized and develop all its powers—­this is Repentance.  He shows not only his sincerity, but his manliness and courage by his acceptance of all that such repentance entails on him; for the healthy soul, like the healthy body, welcomes some trial and roughness and is well able to bear the pains of education.  Psychologists regard such an education, harmonizing the rational or ideal with the instinctive life—­the change of heart which leaves the whole self working together without inner conflict towards one objective—­as the very condition of a full and healthy life.  But it can only be achieved in its perfection by the complete surrender of heart and mind to a third term, transcending alike the impulsive and the rational.  The life of the Spirit in its supreme authority, and its identification with the highest interests of the race, does this:  harnessing man’s fiery energies to the service of the Light.

Therefore, in the rich, new life on which the self enters, one strand must be that of repentance, catharsis, self-conquest; a complete contrition which is the earnest of complete generosity, uncalculated response.  And, dealing as we are now with average human nature, we can safely say that the need for such ever-renewed self-scrutiny and self-purgation will never in this life be left behind.  For sin is a fact, though a fact which we do not understand; and now it appears and must evermore remain an offence against love, hostile to this intense new attraction, and marring the self’s willed tendency towards it.

The next strand we may perhaps call that of Recollection:  for the recognizing and the cure of imperfection depends on the compensating search for the Perfect and its enthronement as the supreme object of our thought and love.  The self, then, soon begins to feel a strong impulsion to some type of inward withdrawal and concentration, some kind of prayer; though it may not use this name or recognize the character of its mood.  As it yields to this strange new drawing, such recollection grows easier.  It finds that there is a veritable inner world, not merely of phantasy, but of profound heart-searching experience; where the