nd excess as a watch is adjusted and adjustable
between fast and slow. We none of us altogether and always keep the
balance or are altogether safe from losing it. We swing, balancing and
adjusting, along our path. Life is that, and abstinence is for the most
part a mere evasion of life.

3.21. ON FORGETTING, AND THE NEED OF PRAYER, READING, DISCUSSION AND
WORSHIP.

One aspect of life I had very much in mind when I planned those Samurai
disciplines of mine. It was forgetting.

We forget.

Even after we have found Salvation, we have to keep hold of Salvation;
believing, we must continue to believe. We cannot always be at a high
level of noble emotion. We have clambered on the ship of Faith and found
our place and work aboard, and even while we are busied upon it, behold
we are back and drowning in the sea of chaotic things.

Every religious body, every religious teacher, has appreciated this
difficulty and the need there is of reminders and renewals. Faith needs
restatement and revival as the body needs food. And since the Believer
is to seek much experience and be a judge of less or more in many
things, it is particularly necessary that he should keep hold upon a
living Faith.

How may he best do this?

I think we may state it as a general duty that he must do whatever he
can to keep his faith constantly alive. But beyond that, what a man must
do depends almost entirely upon his own intellectual character.
Many people of a regular type of mind can refresh themselves by some
recurrent duty, by repeating a daily prayer, by daily reading or
re-reading some devotional book. With others constant repetition leads
to a mental and spiritual deadening, until beautiful phrases become
unmeaning, eloquent statements inane and ridiculous,--matter for parody.
All who can, I think, should pray and should read and re-read what they
have found spiritually helpful, and if they know of others of kindred
dispositions and can organize these exercises, they should do so.
Collective worship again is a necessity for many Believers. For many,
the public religious services of this or that form of Christianity
supply an atmosphere rich in the essential quality of religion and
abounding in phrases about the religious life, mellow from the use of
centuries and almost immediately applicable. It seems to me that if one
can do so, one should participate in such public worship and habituate
oneself to read back into it that collective p