mind has recognized the identity of his virtue with
Christ's rule, and has verified in practice the wisdom of its original
statement, so now he knows that this moral recovery, and its method, is
what has been known on the lips of saint and sinner as the life of the
Spirit in man, and even more specially he cannot discriminate it from
what the servants of Christ call the life of Christ in them. He has
become more than a humanitarian through this experience; he is now
himself one of those whom in the mass he pities and would help; he has
entered into that communion with his kind and kin which is the earthly
seal of Christian faith.

"Yet it seems to me a profound error in life to concentrate attention
upon the moral experience here described; it is but initial; and, though
repeated, it remains only a beginning; as the vast force of nature is
put forth through health, and its curative power is an incident and
subordinate, so the spiritual energy of life is made manifest, in the
main, in the joy of the soul in so far as it has been made whole. A
narrow insistence on the fact of sin distorts life, and saddens it both
in one's own conscience and in his love for others. Sin is but a part of
life, and it is far better to fix our eyes on the measureless good
achieved in those lines of human effort which have either never been
deflected from right aims, or have been brought back to the paths of
advance, which I believe to be the greater part, both in individual
lives of noble intention, and in the Christian nations. Sin loses half
its dismaying power, and evil is stripped of its terrors, if one
recognizes how far ideal motives enter with controlling influence into
personal life, and to what a degree ideal destinies are already
incarnate in the spirit of great nations.

"However this may be, I find on examination of man's common experience
these three things, which establish, it seems to me, a direct relation
between him and God: this spontaneous gratitude, this trustful
dependence, this noble practice, which is, historically, the Christian
life, and is characterized by its distinctive experiences. They are
simple elements: a faith in God's being which has not cared further to
define the modes of that being; a hope which has not grown to specify
even a Resurrection; a love that has not concentrated itself through
limitation upon any instrumental conversion of the world; but, inchoate
as they are, they remain faith, hope, love--t