t the new life is begun there comes a genuine anxiety to break with
the old. For the former environment has now become embarrassing. It
refuses its dismissal from consciousness. It competes doggedly with the
new Environment for a share of the correspondences. And in a hundred
ways the former traditions, the memories and passions of the past, the
fixed associations and habits of the earlier life, now complicate the
new relation. The complex and bewildered soul, in fact, finds itself in
correspondence with two environments, each with urgent but yet
incompatible claims. It is a dual soul living in a double world, a world
whose inhabitants are deadly enemies, and engaged in perpetual
civil-war.

The position of things is perplexing. It is clear that no man can
attempt to live both lives. To walk both in the flesh and in the spirit
is morally impossible. "No man," as Christ so often emphasized, "can
serve two masters." And yet, as matter of fact, here is the new-born
being in communication with both environments? With sin and purity,
light and darkness, time and Eternity, God and Devil, the confused and
undecided soul is now in correspondence. What is to be done in such an
emergency? How can the New Life deliver itself from the still-persistent
past?

A ready solution of the difficulty would be _to die_. Were one to die
organically, to die and "go to heaven," all correspondence with the
lower environment would be arrested at a stroke. For Physical Death of
course simply means the final stoppage of all natural correspondences
with this sinful world.

But this alternative, fortunately or unfortunately, is not open. The
detention here of body and spirit for a given period is determined for
us, and we are morally bound to accept the situation. We must look then
for a further alternative.

Actual Death being denied us, we must ask ourselves if there is nothing
else resembling it--no artificial relation, no imitation or semblance of
Death which would serve our purpose. If we cannot yet die absolutely,
surely the next best thing will be to find a temporary substitute. If we
cannot die altogether, in short, the most we can do is to die as much as
we can. And we now know this is open to us, and how. To die to any
environment is to withdraw correspondence with it, to cut ourselves off,
so far as possible, from all communication with it. So that the solution
of the problem will simply be this, for the spiritual life to reverse
con