e feverishly self-conscious, and more distracted, than is our
own bewildered generation; nor any which stood in greater need of
Blake's exhortation: "Let every Christian as much as in him lies, engage
himself openly and publicly before all the World in some Mental pursuit
for the Building up of Jerusalem."[39]

How many people do each of us know who work and will in quiet love, and
thus participate in eternal life?

Consider the weight of each of these words. The energy, the clear
purpose, the deep calm, the warm charity they imply. Willed work; not
grudging toil. Quiet love, not feverish emotionalism. Each term is quite
plain and human, and each has equal importance as an attribute of
heavenly life. How many politicians--the people to whom we have confided
the control of our national existence--work and will in quiet love? What
about industry? Do the masters, or the workers, work and will in quiet
love? that is to say with diligence and faithful purpose, without
selfish anxiety, without selfish demands and hostilities? What about the
hurried, ugly and devitalizing existence of our big towns? Can we
honestly say that young people reared in them are likely to acquire this
temper of heaven? Yet we have been given the secret, the law of
spiritual life; and psychologists would agree that it represents too the
most favourable of conditions for a full psychic life, the state in
which we have access to all our sources of power.

But man will not achieve this state unless he dwells on the idea of it;
and, dwelling on that idea, opening his mind to its suggestions, brings
its modes of expression into harmony with his thought about the world of
daily life. Our spiritual life to-day, such as it is, tends above all to
express itself in social activities. Teacher after teacher comes forward
to plume himself on the fact that Christianity is now taking a "social
form"; that love of our neighbour is not so much the corollary as the
equivalent of the love of God, and so forth. Here I am sure that all can
supply themselves with illustrative quotations. Yet is there in this
state of things nothing but food for congratulation? Is such a view
complete? Is nothing left out? Have we not lost the wonder and poetry of
the forest in our diligent cultivation of the economically valuable
trees; and shall we ever see life truly until we see it with the poet's
eyes? There is so much meritorious working and willing; and so little
time left for quie