d
that conferences and congresses do not bring about the millennium, you
are saved from despair if you keep ever fresh your sense of humour.

There are problems in the life of the reformer which the mountains never
fail to put before me. I have so often come to them from the heat and
turmoil of controversy. I have come like a soldier from battle, covered
with mud and slightly wounded, yet exultant in the spirit of the fray.
The mountains speak to me, and lo! another self appears. They speak to
me of beauty, of peace, of the infinite mystery of life; they give me
broad effects of light and shade, and obliterate the small pictures
which pursue me on the plains. Yesterday, in the stillness of Alpine
midwinter, the moon shone clear and full on the glacier. I sat gazing
at the outlines of the peaks trembling in the pale light of a perfect
evening. The noisy mountain torrents were held captive in prisons of
ice, but here and there the sound of an irrepressible rivulet threading
its underground way through stones and earth brought to my ears a song
of spring. I love the trees, the sky, the snow--all my senses respond to
the call of the solitude of Nature. I felt free and happy; I sank into
the state of bliss in which the soul is conscious of no desire. Surely
this is better than the strife and the sordid cares of the camp;
surely one may walk apart and enjoy the fruits of tranquillity? Our
consciousness can admit but an infinitesimal part of that which is: let
us then fill it to the brim with the joy of beauty, with the harmony of
being at rest. Then I remembered the things which lay beyond my peaks
and my moonlight: a vision of prisons and shambles, of battlefields and
slums, passed before my eyes. How can one forget! How can one enjoy
peace and beauty! Duty bids us to descend, love bids us to share the
suffering.

And yet are there not two ways of seeking perfection, two paths clearly
defined and well trodden throughout the ages--reform of self and reform
of others? What may at first sight appear as aesthetic or mystic egoism
is perhaps the better way. The hermit who forsakes the world and
renounces the social ties and burdens which most men count of value is
bent on the purification of his own soul. Monasticism--with all its
faults--recognized the essential need of self-examination and
self-discipline. It bade us cleanse our souls, conquer our own
temptations, by a rigid system of religious exercise. Our modern
reformer i