instinct which drives the reformer headlong against the evils of the world, as it once drove two cave men at each others’ throats.  Love, which begins in the mergence of two cells, ends in the saint’s supreme discovery, “Thou art the Love wherewith the heart loves Thee."[73] The much advertized herd instinct may weld us into a mob at the mercy of unreasoning passions; but it can also make us living members of the Communion of Saints.  The appeals of the prophet and the revivalist, the Psalmist’s “Taste and see,” the Baptist’s “Change your hearts,” are all invitations to an alteration in the direction of desire, which would turn our instinctive energies in a new direction and begin the domestication of the human soul for God.

This, then, is the real business of conversion and of the character building that succeeds it; the harnessing of instinct to idea and its direction into new and more lofty channels of use, transmuting the turmoil of man’s merely egoistic ambitions, anxieties and emotional desires into fresh forms of creative energy, and transferring their interest from narrow and unreal to universal objectives.  The seven deadly sins of Christian ethics—­Pride, Anger, Envy, Avarice, Sloth, Gluttony, and Lust—­represent not so much deliberate wrongfulness, as the outstanding forms of man’s uncontrolled and self-regarding instincts; unbridled self-assertion, ruthless acquisitiveness, and undisciplined indulgence of sense.  The traditional evangelical virtues of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience which sum up the demands of the spiritual life exactly oppose them.  Over against the self-assertion of the proud and angry is set the ideal of humble obedience, with its wise suppleness and abnegation of self-will.  Over against the acquisitiveness of the covetous and envious is set the ideal of inward poverty, with its liberation from the narrow self-interest of I, Me and Mine.  Over against the sensual indulgence of the greedy, lustful and lazy is set the ideal of chastity, which finds all creatures pure to enjoy, since it sees them in God, and God in all creatures.  Yet all this, rightly understood, is no mere policy of repression.  It is rather a rational policy of release, freeing for higher activities instinctive force too often thrown away.  It is giving the wild beast his work to do, training him.  Since the instincts represent the efforts of this urgent life in us to achieve self-protection and self-realization, it is plain that the true regeneration of the psyche, its redirection from lower to higher levels, can never be accomplished without their help.  We only rise to the top of our powers when the whole man acts together, urged by an enthusiasm or an instinctive need.