e, to those sources of power which
flow in, but are not dragged in. Indications of its truth meet us
everywhere in spiritual literature. Thus Jacob Boehme says, "Because
thou strivest against that out of which thou art come, thou breakest
thyself off with thy own willing from God's willing."[117] So too the
constant invitations to let God work and speak, to surrender, are all
invitations to cease anxious strife and effort and give the Divine
suggestions their chance. The law of reversed effort, in fact, is valid
on every level of life; and warns us against the error of making
religion too grim and strenuous an affair. Certainly in all life of the
Spirit the will is active, and must retain its conscious and steadfast
orientation to God. Heroic activity and moral effort must form an
integral part of full human experience. Yet it is clearly possible to
make too much of the process of wrestling evil. An attention chiefly and
anxiously concentrated on the struggle with sins and weaknesses, instead
of on the eternal sources of happiness and power, will offer the
unconscious harmful suggestions of impotence and hence tend to
frustration. The early ascetics, who made elaborate preparations for
dealing with temptations, got as an inevitable result plenty of
temptations with which to deal. A sounder method is taught by the
mystics. "When thoughts of sin press on thee," says "The Cloud of
Unknowing," "look over their shoulders seeking another thing, the which
thing is God."[118]

These laws of suggestion, taken together, all seem to point, one way.
They exhibit the human self as living, plastic, changeful; perpetually
modified by the suggestions pouring in on it, the experiences and
intuitions to which it reacts. Every thought, prayer, enthusiasm, fear,
is of importance to it. Nothing leaves it as it was before. The soul,
said Boehme, stands both in heaven and in hell. Keep it perpetually busy
at the window of the senses, feed it with unlovely and materialistic
ideas, and those ideas will realize themselves. Give the contemplative
faculty its chance, let it breathe at least for a few moments of each
day the spiritual atmosphere of faith, hope and love, and the spiritual
life will at least in some measure be realized by it.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 85: On all this, cf. J. Varendonck, "The Psychology of
Day-dreams."]

[Footnote 86: Jacob Boehme: "The Way to Christ," Pt. IV.]

[Footnote 87: Patmore: "The Rod, the Root and the Flo