d the divine goodness, or he
can live downward toward the poor, thin, limiting isolation of
individual selfhood. But {36} through the shifting drama of our human
destiny God never leaves us. He is always within us, as near to the
heart of our being as the Light is to the eye. Conscience is the
witness of His continued Presence; the drawing which we feel toward
higher things is born in the unlost image of God which is planted in
our nature "like the tree of Life in Eden." He pleads in our hearts by
His inner Word; He reveals the goodness of Himself in His vocal
opposition to all that would harm and spoil us, and He labours
unceasingly to be born in us and to bring forth His love and His
spiritual kingdom in the domain of our own spirits. The way of life is
to die to the flesh and to the narrow will of the self, and to become
alive to the Spirit and Word of God in the soul, to enter into and
participate in that eternal love with which God loves us. This central
idea of the double nature of man--an upper self indissolubly linked
with God and a lower self rooted in fleshly and selfish desires--runs
through all his writings, and in his view all the processes of
revelation are to further the liberation and development of the higher
and to weaken the gravitation of the lower self.

His first book deals with God's twofold revelation of
Himself--primarily as a living Word in the soul of man, and secondarily
through external signs and events, in an historical word, and in a
temporal incarnation. With a wealth and variety of expression and
illustration he insists and reiterates that only through the
citadel--or better the sanctuary--of his inner self can man be
spiritually reached, and won, and saved. Nobody can be saved until he
knows himself at one with God; until he finds his will at peace and in
harmony with God's will; until his inward spirit is conscious of unity
with the eternal Spirit; in short, until love sets him free with the
freedom and joy of sons of God. Priests may absolve men if they will,
and ministers may pronounce them saved, but all _that_ counts for
nothing until the inward transformation is a fact and the will has
found its goal in the will of God: "Love must bloom and the spirit {37}
of the man must follow the will of God written in his heart."[6]

All external means in religion have one purpose and one function; they
are to awaken the mind and to direct it to the inward Word. The most
startling