almost call
saintliness.

But perhaps some one may object that a standard by which
personalities like Savonarola, Washington, Howard and Peabody
fall short is probably set too high, and that in any case the erection
of such a standard cannot be very helpful to the common run of
human beings. Where these heroic natures fall short, can you and I
hope to attain? To such an objection the reply is that we cannot be
too fastidious or exacting in respect to our standard, however poor
our performance may be. Nothing less than a kind of divine
completeness should ever content us. Furthermore, there have
been some men who approached nearer to the spiritual ideal than
the patriots and the philanthropists just mentioned--some few men
among the Greeks, the Hindus, and the Hebrews. And for the
guidance of conduct, these more excellent spirits avail us more
than the examples of a Savonarola, a Washington or a Howard. To
be a prophet or the lawgiver of a nation is not within your
province and mine. For such a task hardly one among millions has
the opportunity or the gifts. To be liberators of their country has
been accorded in all the ages thus far covered by human history to
so small a number of men that one might count them on the fingers
of a single hand. Even to be philanthropists on a large scale is the
restricted privilege of a very few. But to lead the spiritual life is
possible to you and me if we choose to do so. The best is within
the reach of all, or it would not be the best. Every one is permitted
to share life's highest good.

The spiritual life, then, may be described by its characteristic
marks of serenity, a certain inwardness, a measure of saintliness.
By the latter we are not to understand merely the aspiration after
virtue or after a lofty ideal, still pursued and still eluding, but to a
certain extent the embodiment of this ideal in the life--virtue
become a normal experience like the inhalation and exhalation of
breath! Moreover, the spiritually-minded seem always to be
possessed of a great secret. This air of interior knowledge, of the
perception of that which is hidden from the uninitiated, is a
common mark of all refinement, aesthetic as well as moral. In
studying the face of Leonardo da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa,' for instance,
one will find that it is this interior insight that explains the so-called
"cryptic smile." In the case of aesthetic refinement, the secret
discloses itself as at bottom delicacy, the delic