Moreover, in my own experience, the further secret, whatever it is, is by no means wholly joyful and not at all light-hearted.  It seems to me at such times that it is rather solemn, profound, serious, difficult, and sad.  But it is not a heavy or depressing sadness—­ indeed, the thought is at once hopeful and above everything beautiful.  It has nothing that is called sentimental about it.  It is not full of rest and content and peace; it is rather strong and stern, though it is gentle too; but it is the kind of gentle strength which faces labour and hardness, not troubled by them, and indeed knowing that only thus can the secret be attained.  There is no hint of easy, childlike happiness about the mood; there is a happiness in it, but it is an old and a wise happiness that has learned how to wait and is fully prepared for endurance.  There is no fretfulness in it, no chafing over dreams unrealised, no impatience or disappointment.  But it does not speak of an untroubled bliss—­rather of a deep, sad and loving patience, which expects no fulfilment, no easy satisfaction of desire.

It always seems to me that the quality which most differentiates men is the power of recognising the Unknown.  Some natures acquiesce buoyantly or wretchedly in present conditions, and cannot in any circumstances look beyond them; some again have a deep distaste for present conditions whatever they are; and again there are some who throw themselves eagerly and freely into present conditions, use experience, taste life, enjoy, grieve, dislike, but yet preserve a consciousness of something above and beyond.  The idealist is one who has a need in his soul to worship, to admire, to love.  The mistake made too often by religious idealists is to believe that this sense of worship can only be satisfied by religious and, even more narrowly, by ecclesiastical observance.  For there are many idealists to whom religion with its scientific creeds and definite dogmas seems only a dreary sort of metaphysic, an attempt to define what is beyond definition.  But there are some idealists who find the sense of worship and the consciousness of an immortal power in the high passions and affections of life.  To these the human form, the spirit that looks out from human eyes, are the symbols of their mystery.  Others find it in art and music, others again in the endless loveliness of nature, her seas and streams, her hills and woods.  Others again find it in visions of helping and raising mankind out of base conditions, or in scientific investigation of the miraculous constitution of nature.  It has a hundred forms and energies; but the one feature of it is the sense of some vast and mysterious Power, which holds the world in its grasp—­a Power which can be dimly apprehended and even communicated with.  Prayer is one manifestation of this sense, though prayer is but a formulation of one’s desires for oneself and for the world.