Should we choose this, and should life of the Spirit be achieved by us—­and it will only be done through daily discipline and attention to the Spiritual, a sacrifice of comfort to its interests, following up the intuition which sets us on the path—­what benefits may we as ordinary men expect it to bring to us and to the community that we 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 reserves for man another secret and another level of consciousness; a closer identification with Reality, such as eye hath not seen, or ear heard.