hat we should commit ourselves to any one party
or scheme of social reform. Still less is it necessary to suppose such
reform the only field in which the active and social side of the
spiritual life is to be lived. Repentance, surrender, recollection and
industry can do their transfiguring work in art, science, craftsmanship,
scholarship, and play: making all these things more representative of
reality, nearer our own best possible, and so more vivid and worth
while. If Tauler was right, and all kinds of skill are gifts of the Holy
Ghost--a proposition which no thorough-going theist can refuse--then
will not a reference back on the part of the worker to that fontal
source of power make for humility and perfection in all work? Personally
I am not at all afraid to recognize a spiritual element in all good
craftsmanship, in the delighted and diligent creation of the fine
potter, smith or carpenter, in the well-tended garden and beehive, the
perfectly adjusted home; for do not all these help the explication of
the one Spirit of Life in the diversity of His gifts?

The full life of the Spirit must be more rich and various in its
expression than any life that we have yet known, and find place for
every worthy and delightful activity. It does not in the least mean a
bloodless goodness; a refusal of fun and everlasting fuss about uplift.
But it does mean looking at and judging each problem in a particular
light, and acting on that judgment without fear. Were this principle
established, and society poised on this centre, reforms would follow its
application almost automatically; specific evils would retreat. New
knowledge of beauty would reveal the ugliness of many satisfactions
which we now offer to ourselves, and new love the defective character of
many of our social relations. Certain things would therefore leave off
happening, would go; because the direction of desire had changed. I do
not wish to particularize, for this only means blurring the issue by
putting forward one's own pet reforms. But I cannot help pointing out
that we shall never get spiritual values out of a society harried and
tormented by economic pressure, or men and women whose whole attention
is given up to the daily task of keeping alive. This is not a political
statement: it is a plain fact that we must face. Though the courageous
lives of the poor, their patient endurance of insecurity may reveal a
nobility that shames us, it still remains true that these