tion, and
moves forward and enlarges itself with still larger revelations of the
Divine Truth. The great opportunities for renunciation come not in the
guise of temporal and material things; whether one shall eat or drink
this thing or the other; whether he shall forego the theatre, or deprive
himself of music, or array himself in sackcloth and ashes, or in purple
and fine linen. The real question comes in the guise of the spiritual
problems.

One comes to know, for instance, of an act of his neighbor's which is
really one of treachery and betrayal of trust. Circumstances arise in
which he could put his finger upon the evidential chain revealing this
lapse from integrity. Shall he do it? Perhaps in the spiritual vista
three ways open to him. The one would be to reveal the affair publicly;
but this is crude if not cruel, and to touch the spring that
precipitates discord and controversy is hardly less disastrous than to
precipitate war. Discord only engenders evil, and it never produces good
results. Evil things must, of course, be resisted, and combat inevitably
results,--but discord for the sake of revealing some one's inadvertences
is invariably disastrous as well as morally wrong. Then there is the
method of seeking the person directly, and laying before him his error,
thus giving him the opportunity of any extenuating explanation, and
protecting his reputation in the genuineness of true friendship, from
the world. And this course is often the wisest as well as the noblest,
and really requires more heroism than the former one. Yet, after these
there is still another, and it is absolutely the most potent, the most
successful in its results, the most truly uplifting for all concerned.
Has one been wronged, or misrepresented, or in any way injured? Let him
commit it all, unreservedly, to the very immediate, the very real, the
infinitely potent power of the divine world. Let him, as his own form of
personal renunciation, absolutely forgive whatever annoyance or injury
he has received, and let him pray, not for any vengeance against the
wrong-doer, but that the Divine Love and Light would so envelop and
direct the one who has erred as to enable him to free his own spirit
from whatever fault he had been led into, and to rise into such regions
of spiritual life that never again would he repeat it. How beautiful is
the counsel given by Whittier:--

"My heart was heavy, for its trust had been
Abused, its kindness answe