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THE HOUSE OF THE SOUL

BY THE SAME AUTHORMYSTICISMTwelfth Edition, RevisedTHE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT AND THE LIFE OFTO-DAYSeventh EditionMAN AND THE SUPERNATURAL)CONCERNING THE INNER LIFE Sixth Edition 1THE GOLDEN SEQUENCEThird EditionII1|MIXED PASTURE *

THE HOUSEOF THE SOULByEVELYN UNDERBILLSECOND EDITIONMETHUEN & CO. LTD.36 ESSEX STREET W.C.LONDON

First Published . . . October 3rd 1929Second Edition . . .1933PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

FORROSAWITH MY LOVE

PREFATORY NOTETHIS little book is in no sense a literarywork. It merely consists of the notes ofa series of informal addresses which weregiven to a small group of like-minded people ;and isintended rather to stimulate meditationthan to give information. Its readers are askedof their charity to judge itview.from this point ofE. U.Feast of St. Mary Magdalen, 19.29

However great the breadth, the depth, theheight of our thought of the soul, we shallnot exceed the reality ; for its capacity isfar greater than we are able to conceive,and the Sun which dwells in this housepenetrates to every corner of it.ST. TERESA

IWHEN St.Paul described our mysterioushuman nature as a "Temple of theHoly Spirit" a created dwelling-place orsanctuary of the uncreated and invisibleDivine Life he was stating in the strongestpossible terms a view of our status, our relationto God, which has always been present inChristianity; and is indeed implicit in theChristian view of Reality. But that statementas it stands seems far too strong for most of us.We do not feel in the very least like the templesof Creative Love. We are more at ease withSt. Teresa, when she describes the soul as an"interior castle" a roomy mansion, withvarious floors and apartments from the basementupwards; not all devoted to exalted uses,not always in a satisfactory state. And when,in a more homely mood, she speaks of her ownspiritual life as "becoming solid like a house,"we at last get something we can grasp.The soul's house, that interior dwellingplacewhich we all possess, for the upkeep ofwhich we are responsible a place in which wecan meet God, or from which in a sense we canexclude Godthat is not too big an idea for us.Though no imagery drawn from the life ofsense can ever be adequate to the strange and

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULdelicate contacts, tensions, demands and benedictionsof the life that liesbeyond sense : thoughthe important part of every parableis that whichit fails to express: still, here is a conceptionwhich can be made to cover many of the truthsthat govern the interior life of prayer.First, we are led to consider the position ofthe house. However interesting and importantits peculiarities may seem to the tenant, it is notas a matter of fact an unusually picturesque andinteresting mansion made to an original design,and set in its own grounds with no other buildingin sight. Christian spirituality knowsnothing of this sort of individualism. It insiststhat we do not inhabit detached residences, butare parts of a vast spiritual organism ;that eventhe most hidden life is never lived for itselfalone. Our soul's house forms part of the vastCity of God. Though it may not be an importantmansion with a frontage on the mainstreet, nevertheless it shares all the obligationsand advantages belonging to the city as awhole. It gets its water from the main, and itslight from the general supply. The way wemaintain and use it must have reference to ourcivic responsibilities.It is true that God creates souls in a marvellousliberty and variety. The ideals of thebuilding estate tell us nothing about the Kingdomof Heaven. It is true, also, that thefurnishing of our rooms and cultivation of ourgarden islargely left to our personal industry10

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULand good taste. Still, in a general way, we mustfall in with the city's plan; and consider,when we hang some new and startling curtains,how they will look from the street. Howeverintense the personallifeof each soul may be,that personal life has got out of proportion, ifit makes us forget our municipal obligationsand advantages; for our true significance ismore than personal,it is bound up with thefact of our status as members of a supernaturalsociety.So into all the affairs of the little housethere should enter a certain sense of the city,and beyondthis of the infinite world in whichthe city stands: some awestruck memory ofat once so homely andour double situation,so mysterious. We must each maintainunimpaired our unique relation with God; yetwithout forgetting our intimate contact withthe rest of the city, or the mesh of invisiblelife which binds all the inhabitants in one,For it is on the unchanging Life of God, ason a rock, that the whole cityis founded. Thataugust and cherishing Spirit is the atmospherewhich bathes it, and fills each room of everylittle house quickening, feeding and sustaining.He is the one Reality which makesus real; and, equally, the other houses too."If I am not in Thee," said St. Augustine,"then I am not at all." We are often urged tothink of the spirituallife as a personal adventure ,a ceaseless hustle forward; with all itsmeaningcondensed in the "perfection" of the last stage.II

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULBut though progress, or rather growth, is trulyin it, such growth in so far as it is real can onlyarise from, and be conditioned by, a far morefundamental relation the growing soul'sabidingness in God.Next, what type of house does the soul livein? It is a two-story house. The psychologisttoo often assumes that it is a one-roomedcottage with a mud floor; and never evenattempts to go upstairs.The extreme transcendentalistsometimes talks as thoughit wereperched in the air, like the lake dwellings ofour primitive ancestors, and had no groundfloor at all. A more humble attention to factssuggests that neither of these simplifications istrue. We know that we have a ground floor,a natural life biologically conditioned, withanimal instincts and affinities ;and that this lifeis very important, for it is the product of thedivine creativity its builder and maker is God.But we know too that we have an upper floor, asupernatural life, with supernatural possibilities,a capacity for God; and that this, man'speculiar prerogative, is more important still.If we try to live on one floor alone we destroythe mysterious beauty of our human vocation;so utterly a part of the fugitive and creaturelylife of this planet and yet so deeply colouredby Eternity so; entirely one with the world ofnature and yet, "in the Spirit," a habitationof God. "Thou madest him lower than theangels, to crown him with glory and worship."12

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULWe are created both in Time and in Eternity,not truly one but truly two ;and every thought,word and act must be subdued to the dignity ofthat double situation in which Almighty Godhas placed and companions the childish spiritof man.Therefore a full and wholesome spiritual lifecan never consist in living upstairs, and forgettingto consider the groundfloor and itshomely uses and needs thus; ignoring thehumbling fact that those upper rooms areentirely supported by Nor it. does it consist inthe constant, exasperated investigation of theshortcomings of the basement. When St.Teresa said that her prayer had become "solidlike a house" she meant that its foundationsnow went down into the lowly but firm groundof human nature, the concrete actualities ofthe natural life :and, on those solid foundations,its wall rose up towards heaven. The strengthof the house consisted in that intimate weldingtogether of the divine and the human, whichshe found in its perfection in the humanity ofChrist. There, in the common stuff of humanlife which He blessed by His presence, thesaints have ever seen the homely foundationsof holiness. Since we are two-story creatures,called to a natural and a supernatural status,both sense and spiritmust be rightly maintained,kept in order, consecrated to the purposesof the city,if our full obligations are to beIfulfilled. The house is built for God; to reflect,B13

forTHE HOUSE OFTHE SOULon each level, something of His unlimitedPerfection. Downstairs that general rightnessof adjustment to all this-world obligations,which the ancients called the quality ofJustice; and the homely virtues of Prudence,Temperance and Fortitude reminding us ofour creatureliness, our limitations, and sohumbling and disciplining us. Upstairs, theheavenly powers of Faith, Hope and Charity;tending towards the Eternal,nourishing ourlife towards God, and having no meaningapart from God.But the soul's house will never be a realhome unless the groundfloor is as cared forand as habitable as the beautiful rooms upstairs.We are required to live in the wholeof our premises, and are responsible the,condition of the whole of our premises. It isuseless to repaper theifdrawing-room whatwe really need is a new sink. In that secretDivine purpose which is all lifedrawingtowardsperfection, the whole house is meant tobe beautiful and ought to be beautiful; for itcomes from God, and was made to His design.Christ's soul when on earth lived in one ofthese houses; had to use the same fitments,make the same arrangements do. We cannotexcuse our own failures by attributing them tothe inconvenience of the premises, and the factthat some very old-fashioned bits of apparatussurvive. Most of us have inherited some uglybits of furniture, or unfortunate family portraits'

| disconcertingi whereTHE HOUSE OFTHE SOULwhich we can't get rid of, and which preventour rooms being quite a success. Neverthelessthe soul does not grow strong merely byenjoying its upstairs privileges and ignoringdownstairs disadvantages, problems and responsibilities; only by tackling its real taskbutof total transformation. It is called to maintaina house which shall be in its completeness "ahabitation of God in the Spirit" ;subdued toHis purpose on all levels, manifesting Hisglory in what we call natural life, as well asin what we call spiritual life. For man is thelink between these two orders; truly createda little lower than the angels, yet truly crownedwith glory and worship, because in this unperfectedhuman nature the Absolute Lifeitself has deigned to dwell.That means, reduced to practice, that thewhole house with its manifold and gradedactivities must be a house of prayer. It does.not mean keeping a Quiet Room to which wecan retreat, with mystical pictures on the walls,and curtains over the windows to temper theintensity of the light; a roomwe can forget the fact that there areblack beetles in the kitchen, and that the rangeis not working very well. Once we admit anyviolent contrast between the upper and lowerfloor, the "instinctive" and "spiritual" life, orfeela reluctance to investigate the humblingrealities of the basement, our life becomes less,pot more, than human ;and our position is

THE HOUSE OF THE SOULunsafe. Are we capable of the adventure ofcourage which inspires the great prayer of St.Augustine: "The house of my soul is narrow;do Thou enter in and enlargeit! It is ruinous;do Thou repair it"? Can we risk the visitationof the mysterious Power that will go through allour untidy rooms, showing up their shortcomingsand their possibilities; reproving by thetranquillity of order the waste and muddle ofour inner life ? The mere hoarded rubbish thatought to go into the dustbin; the things thatwant mending and washing the ; possessions wehave never taken the trouble to use ? Yet this isthe only condition on which man can participatein that fullness of life for which he is made.The Lord's Prayer, in which St. Teresa saidthat she found the whole art of contemplationfrom its simple beginning to its transcendentgoal, witnesses with a wonderful beauty andcompleteness to this two-story character of thesoul's house ;and yet its absolute unity.Itbegins at the top, in the watch tower of faith,with the sublime assertion of our supernaturalstatus the one relation, intimate yet inconceivable,that allgoverns the rest "OurFather who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thyname." Whatever the downstairs muddle andtension we have to deal with, however greatthe difficulty of adjusting the claims of theinstincts that live in the basement and theinterests that clamour at the door, all thesedemands, all this rich and testing experience, is16

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULenfolded and transfused by the cherishing,over-ruling life and power of God. We are liftedclear of the psychological tangle in which thelife of our spirit too often seems enmeshed, intothe pure, serene light of Eternity and shown;the whole various and disconcerting pageant ofcreation as proceeding from God, and existingHis name. Childlikeonlythat itmayglorifydependence and joyful adoration are placedtogetheras the twin characters of the soul'srelation to God.Thence, step by step, this prayer brings usdownstairs, goes with us through the wholelouse; bringing the supernatural into thenatural, blessing and sanctifying, cleansing andrectifying every aspect of the home. "ThyKingdom come!" Hope trustful expectation."Thy will be done !" Charity the loving unionof our wills with the Infinite Will. Then theground floor. "Give us this day" that foodfrom beyond ourselves which nourishes andsustains our life. Forgiveall our little failuresand excesses, neutralize the corroding powerof our conflicts, disharmonies, rebellions, sins.We can't deal with them alone. Teach us, astowards our fellow citizens, to share thatgenerous tolerance of God. Lead us not intosituations where we are tried beyond ourstrength; but meet us on the battlefield ofpersonality, and protect the weakness of theadolescent spirit against the downward pull ofthe inhabitants of the lower floor.

THEHOUSEOF THE SOULAnd then, the reason of all this ;bringingtogether, in one supreme declaration of joyand confidence, the soul's sense of that sup-theporting, holy, and eternal Reality who isRuler and the Light of the city,and of everyroom in every little house. Thine is the Kingdom,the Power and the Glory. If our interiorlife be subdued to the spirit of this prayer, withits rich sense of our mighty heritage and childlikestatus, our total dependence on the Realityof God, then the soul's house is truly runningwell. Its action is transfused by contemplation.The door isopen between the upper and thelower floors; the life of spiritand life of sense."Two cities," said St. Augustine, "have beencreated by two loves: the earthly city by love ofself even to contempt of God, the heavenlycity by love of God even to contempt of self.The one city glories in itself; the other cityin itsglories in the Lord. The one city gloriesown strength; the other city says to its God,'I will love Thee, O Lord my strength.'Perhaps there has never been a time in Christianhistory when that contrast has been moresharply felt than it is now the contrastbetween that view of man's situation andmeaning, in which the emphasisfalls on humanity,its vast desires and wonderful achievements,even to contempt of God and the view in;which the emphasisfalls on God's transcendentaction and over-ruling will, even to contempt ofself. St. Augustine saw, and still would see,18"

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULmankind ever at work building those two cities;and every human soul as a potential citizen ofone or the other. And from this point of view,that which we call the "interior life" is just thehome life of those who inhabit the invisible Cityof God ;realistically taking up their municipalprivileges and duties, and pursuing them "evento contempt of self." It is the obligation andthe art of keeping the premises entrusted to usin good order, having ever in view the welfareof the city as a whole.Some souls, like some people, can be shimmyanywhere. There isalways a raucous and uncontrolledvoice ascending from the basement,and a pail of dirty water at the foot of the stairs.Others can achieve in the most impossiblesituation a simple and beautiful life. The goodcitizen must be able without reluctance toopen the door at all times, not only at theweek-end; must keep the windows cleanand taps running properly, that the light andliving water may come in. These free gifts ofthe supernatural are offered to each house ;andonly as free gifts can they be had. Our noisylittleengine will not produce the true light nor;our most desperate digging a proper watersupply. Recognition of this fact, this entiredependence of the creature, is essential if thefull benefits of our mysterious citizenship areever to be enjoyed by us. "I saw," said the poetof the Apocalypse, "the holy city coming downfrom God out of heaven . . . the glory of God

lit itTHE HOUSE OFTHE SOUL... the water of life proceeded out of thethrone of God." All is the free gift of the supernatural;not the result of human growth andeffort. God's generous and life-givingwork inthe world of souls ever goes before man's workin God. So the main thing about the InvisibleCity is not the industry and good character ofthe inhabitants: they do not make it shine. Itis the tranquil operation of that perpetualprovidence, which incites and supports theirsmall activities ;the direct and childlike relationin which they stand to the city's Ruler; thegenerous lightand air that bathe the littlehouses; the unchanging rock of Eternity onwhich their foundations stand.20

IIWE come back to examine more closely ourdomestic responsibilities: the two floorsof the soul's house. We begin on the groundfloor;for until that is in decent order it isuseless to go upstairs.A well-ordered naturallife is the only safe basis of our supernaturallife: Christianity, which brought the groundfloor, with its powerful but unruly impulses,within the area of God's grace, demands its sublimationand dedication to His purposes. Weare required to live in the whole of our house,learning to go freely and constantly up anddown stairs, backwards and forwards, easilyand willingly, from one kind of life to the other ;weaving together the higher and lower powersof the soul, and using both for the glory of God.No exclusive spiritualitywill serve the purposesof man, called to be a link between two worlds.There are days, months for some therewill be years when we look out of the windowof faith, and find that the view is hidden ina mantle of fog: when we turn to the workshopof hope, and find the fog has made thatchilland gloomy too: when we resort to thecentral heating, and find that is not workingvery well. Then when Faith, Hope andCharityall seem to fail us is the time to21

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULremember the excellent advice which Mrs.Berry gave to Richard Feverel's bride: "Whenthe parlour fire burns low, put on coals in thekitchen." Accept your limitations, go downstairs,and attend to the life of the lower floor.Our vocation requires of us an equal alertnesswith the censer and the scrubbing brush.When the door between the two stories is open,a flood of disconcerting lightis shed upon thatlower floor and itscondition; and our feebleexcuses for its muddled state fade into silence.But if we face the facts in the right spiritweshall find, like St. Teresa, the Presence we lostupstairs walking among the pots and pans.The disciplined use of the lower floor and allthe rich material it offers is therefore essentialto the peace and prosperity of the upper floor ;we cannot merely shut the door at the top ofthe basement stairs and hope for the best. Theloud voices of unmortified nature, saying "Iwant! I will! I won't!" rising up from thekitchen premises, will ruin the delicate musicof the upstairs wireless. Here is the source of allthe worst distractions in prayer, and the lair ofall the devils that tempt us most : our inclinationsto selfish choices, inordinate enjoyments,claimful affection, self-centred worry, instinctiveavoidance of sacrifice and painall thedownward drag of animal life. Here, as St.Teresa says in The Interior Castle ywe arelikely to find damp unpleasant corners; andreptiles and other horrors lurking in them. If22

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULthe house is to be well run, we must begin bycleaning the kitchen and the scullery; andgiving their energetic but unruly inhabitantstheir jobs. The human power of choice mustbe submitted to the rule of Prudence ;humanimpulse and desire to the rule of Temperance ;our self-protecting mechanisms, sloth, softness,nervous fears, to the bracing touch of Fortitude.That threefold reordering and sublimation ofthe ground floordrastic but unsensationalwill test and purify the soul's realism, humilityand love, far more fully, will subdue it to themysterious Divine action far more completely,than any hasty retreat upstairs can do. "Notonly a good way, but the best of ways," saysSt. Teresa, "is to strive to enter firstby theroom where humility is practised, which is farbetter than at once rushing on to the others."It was no mere upstairs mystic, exclusivelyabsorbed in spiritual things, who uttered themysterious and haunting words "To me, tolive is Christ." It was St. Paul, wrestling withhis own difficult nature, and perpetually consciousof the conflict between sense andspirit as he lived towards God. Here and now,on the ground floor, to live with Prudence,Temperance and Fortitude in the circumstancesgiven me, and with the temperament andfurniture given me because that ground flooris crowned and blessed by the life of Faith,Hope and Charity tending towards God this"is Christ." There is not one landlord for23

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULthe lower floor,and another for the upstairsflat.Every soul, says that true psychologistAugustine Baker, has two internal lights orguides, the spirit of Nature and the Spirit ofGod: and besides these "we neither have norcan have, any other within us." We arereminded of that familiar picture of the oldfashionednurserythe child with a good angelat the righthand and a bad angel at the left.Like many other bits of childish mythology,that picture points beyond itself to a deeptruth. The good angel is really there: Anima,the soul's being when it ascends to its apex, asthe mystics say, stands in the watch tower offaith, opens the window towards Eternity,beholds the Light that is God. "The Supreampart of the Soul," says Peter Sterry, "whichis above Sensible Things, ever living in themidst of Invisible Things this is each Man'sAngel." And the bad angel is really there toothis same complex and variable soul, when itcapitulates to the unfortunate influences of thescullery.We know too well that, like the dogwho has been trained to the drawing-room,there still remains something in us which takesa sneaking interest in the dustbin and will driftoff in that direction if given a chance. The firstthing we realize when we achieve any genuineself-knowledgeis the existence of those twolevels or aspects of the soul's life : the naturalself subject to mutability, the secret and24

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULessential self capable of reality, tending to God.Theyoften seem to pull different ways; theunstable will can hardly keepits feet betweenthem. If we consider in this light the lastunfortunate episode which showed us up toourselves; when we make the second-bestchoice, when a sudden tug at our elbow assuredus that this particular bit of magnanimity, thatrenunciation, was really too much to expecteven though it shone with an unearthlyradiance, though Anima said "Follow me!"then the force of the ancient Advent prayercomes home to us. "O Wisdom proceeding outof the mouth of the Most High, come and teachme the way of Prudence" between the twoconflicting aspects of my double life.Prudence, on the natural level so suggestiveof a self-centred carefulness, the miserablepolicy of "safety first,"and beauty when thus raised toonly achieves dignitythe spiritualstatus, and related to our life in God. Then itis revealed as the virtue which governs andsublimates all behaviour; as isTemperance thevirtue which governs and sublimates desire.We owe to St. Thomas the noblest and deepestof all definitions of Prudence. For him, allvirtues, all the soul's sources of energy, areforms and expressions of one thing Love, theself's will and desire, in the ascending degreesof preference, interest, longing and devotedness,set towards God and the will of God. And,conversely, all sin is due to something gone25

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULwrong with that same sacred power of energeticlove; its direction to wrong objectives. Sin is"a withdrawal from the art of Divine Wisdomand the order of Divine Love" : a wilful settingof our own small lives, hopes and loves out ofline with the vast purposes of God. The rightordering of its innate powers of love and will istherefore all the soul has to do to actualizeits inheritance, make it fit for God. Ordinaquest' amore, o tu che m'ami. Then, the _soul'shouse is ready for its guest. And Prudence,says St. Thomas again, is this Love "choosingbetween what helps and what hinders"choosing what helps the fulfilment of God'swill, and leaving what hinders the fulfilment ofthat will; because He is the soul's love. It isthe dedicated use of the great human power ofchoice, its subjection to the rule of charity the:right ordering of the natural life in the interests,not of one's own preference or advancement,but of the city and the city's King.Thus Prudence is like a good housekeeper ;not very attractive at first sight, but a valuablesort of woman to put in charge if you want yoursoul's house to be well run. With her eye onefficiency, but always for love's sake, she willuse her resources in the best way, keep up thepremises, provide regular and suitable meals.She will not serve devotional meringues forbreakfast, or try to make beautiful fluffyomelettes full of fervour just when eggs arescarce. Dealing with her situation as it really is,26

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULand not proceeding on the assumption that itreally ought to be something else, more interesting,exalted and flattering to self-love, shewill be provident: not using upall her resourcesat the beginning of the week, or making plansshe cannot carry out. She will refuse to translatethe words "called to be saints" into "calledto behave as if we were already saints." Shewill balance prayer and action, never givingout beyond her power, or forgetting to get infresh supplies: so that her spiritual storecupboard is never bare. How mortified, freefrom all spiritual fancifulness and extravagance,is a life over which Prudence presides love of;God, even to contempt of self, determining allchoices, purifying all motives, and maintainingan orderly, disciplined life in the soul.We find this science of behaviour operativein both the great aspects of our human experience,the outward and the inward: our behaviourtowards other souls, our behaviour toourselves. As regards others, itwill mean theloving and careful choice of all that helps anddoes not hinder them. In the life of action, themortified use of our rightful initiative.In thelife of feeling, the custody of the heart, in theinterests of our neighbour's peace as well as ourown. In the life of thought, a humble avoidanceof comments on the crude and childish natureof the symbols through which other souls reachout to God; a discreet suppression of thatclever and interesting bit of up-to-date27

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULtheology, those startling ethical ideas, whichflatter our intelligence but may disturb moretender-minded souls. Nothing is more markedin the Gospels than the prudence with whichChrist gave spiritual truths from His infinitestore: always enlightening, but never overwhelmingthe homely sense-conditioned,humancreatures to whom He was sent. The Mindwhich saw God, and all things displayed in thelight of the Divine Wisdom, and which longedto give all men that great vision which isbeatitude, came down from nights of communionwith that Reality upon the mountain,to teach with Prudence. "Without a parablespake He not" and those parables were madeof the homeliest materials, with little to attracta fastidious spirituality. Yet in them the secretof the Kingdom was hid, so that only those whowere ready for the teaching received it. PerfectWisdom came with kindergarten methods tomen's kindergarten souls.The mind awakened to spiritual reality oftenneeds much self-control, much prudence,if it isto put the truth it has acquired usually verylittle so generally and so genially that there isno risk of giving anyone a spiritual shock, orthe chance of spiritual gastritis.All teachershave to learn with St. Paul to subordinate theirown vision to their pupils' needs ; feeding babieswith milk because they need milk, whilstsuppressing the disheartening information thatthere is a more complete diet in the cupboard.28

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULPrudence proves her love as much by what shewithholds as by what she gives: humbly andpatiently adapting her method to the capacityof each. She never bewilders, dazzles, littlegrowing souls never over-feeds or;drags themout of their depth. The cakes upon her teatableare suited to the digestion of the guests.Prudence further requires the careful handlingof our own lives and capacities; instrumentsgiven us by God, and destined to bemirrors of His skill. It means choosing whathelps, and rejecting what hinders, the fulfilmentof that design, that vocation, which is alreadypresent in embryo in our souls. This subjectionof behaviour to the ultimate purpose of Godmay mean on one hand conduct which seemsabsurdly over-careful ; or, on the other, conductwhich seems imprudent to the last degree. Thetruly prudent, love-impelled choices of thesaints are often in the eyes of the world theextreme of foolishness. St. Simon Stylites,making his pillar higher and higher in his questof that solitude to which he knew that he wascalled St. ; Francis, stripping off all that impededhis love, even to his very clothes, and goingout to destitution; St. Catherine of Genoa,forcing herself to repulsive duties becausethey helped to kill fastidiousness, and makeher self-oblivious love more complete Father;Damien, choosing the certitude of a leper'sdeath; Father Wainright, deliberately goingwithout a midday meal for years, becauseC 29

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULlove made him want to share the privations ofthose he served all these are the actions ofcelestial prudence. Prudence, not preference,took St. Teresa to the convent. She did notlike the cloister, but she knew herself called byGod and chose that which;helped to fulfil Hiswill for her soul. Prudence locked the door ofLady Julian's cell, but sent MarySlessor fromthe Scottish mill to the African jungle; tookFoucauld to the solitude of the Sahara, Livingstoneto Africa, Grenfell to Labrador.Love chooses the work it can do, not thework that it likes. Prudent love took St.himThomas from contemplation and madethe teacher of the schools. Prudent love doesnot insist on being a philanthropist when itlacks the warm outgoing temperament that isneeded, and is decisivelycalled to the morelonely but not less essential vocation ofstudying the deep things of God. It uses thematerial givenit in the best possible way and;thus doing, makes its appointed contribution tothat eternal plan which requires the perfectactive surrender of the willing creature, theof allmaking of all choices and performancetasks in subservience to that God Who is PureAct the total consecration of natural life. "Weare always," says De Caussade, "runningaftersome chimerical perfection, and losing sightofthe only rule of real perfection, which iswill of Godthethat infinitely wise and infinitelygentle will, which if we make it our guide, will3

TH HOUSE OF THE SOULshow us near at hand at any moment, that whichwe vainly and laboriously seek elsewhere."In the Paradiso Dante, with his usual acuteness,makes Prudence love choosing rightlythe boundary between perfect and imperfectbeatitude. The Heaven of those active saintsthrough whom the Divine Wisdom is impartedto men is the Heaven of Prudence. Mindswidely separated in temper and outlook, butunited by their loving choice of GodAnselm and Chrysostom, Francis and Dominic,Hugh of St. Victor and Thomas Aquinasthere dwell together. It is there that the musicof eternity first becomes audible by humanears. And this is surely right for it is only by;means of those costly, love-impelled choiceswhich are the essence of heavenly Prudencethat the natural creature can enter more andmore fully into the rhythm of the supernaturallife.For in the governance of our natural lives, agenuine choice .is left to us. We are neitherdummies, nor the slaves of circumstance. Weare living creatures possessed of a limitedfreedom, a power of initiative, which increasesevery time we use it the right way; we aretrained and developed by being confrontedwith alternatives, on which tremendous issueshang. It is typical of the completeness withwhich each essential factor of our human experiencefinds its rule and patternin theGospels that this free choice between possible

THE HOUSE OF T H E SOULcourses should form our Lord's actual preparationfor His public ministry. Enlightenedat baptism as to His divine Sonship, Hisunique commission, He did not at once rushoff "in the power of the Spirit" to preach thegood news. "He who believeth shall not makehaste." Real poweris the result of innerharmony, and requires perfect accord betweenthe upper and lower floors ; impulse harnessedto obedience. Therefore the Spirit of Wisdomdrove Him into the wilderness, to come toterms with His own human nature. More thanone path lay open before Him. He might claimthe privileges of an exceptional spirit,in themidst of a world which is not exceptional at all :turn the material world to His own purpose,transcend the common laws of nature, assumethe position of the Father's pet child. He mightfollow the path disclosed by spiritual ambition,leading to obvious power and success : the mostinsidious of the three temptations, because itsuggested that His mission of redemption andenlightenment could be fulfilled on a greatscale, by entering into alliance with the spiritand methods of the world. People who think innumbers always mistake this for a call fromGod. Love, choosing what helped, rejected allthese opportunities, and elected the humblecareer of a local prophet and evangelist: alimited scope, unrewarded service, an unappreciativepublic, a narrow path leading tothe Cross.32

THE HOUSE OFThe spiritual life constantlyTHE SOULoffers its neophytesthe equivalent of all these temptations.There are those who think first of their ownspiritualfeedinghunger, and the imperative duty oftheir own souls: those for whom thespiritual life means spiritual privilege whodefy common sense,, take foolish risks, and callthe proceeding trust in God : those who acceptmethods of recommending religion which aresomething less than spiritual, and call this"dealing with the conditions of modern life."All these courses in their different ways mayseem prudent ;and all wilt away before theselflessprudence of Christ. That picture, inits austere majesty and loneliness, forces thesoul to consider how much disguised selfinterest,how much irresponsibility, how muchinclination to compromise, hang about itsground floor and impede the puritychoice for God. For the inner spring whichof itsgoverns all truly prudent choice is such agenerous, general and self-oblivious surrenderas overrules mere personal preference, canenvisage with equal calmness apparent failureand apparent success, and ignores even its ownspiritual advantage. The New Testamentcontains no single instance in which ourLord sought or obtained a private spiritualwho do soadvantage and the devout :personsare at best only vegetable-fibre saints. Likeartificial silk, they look very glossy, but do notstand much wear and tear.33

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULNow Prudence is a positive, not a negative,principle .of action. It requires behaviour, notabstention from behaviour. Itrejects thelower, in order that itmay be free to acceptthe higher choice. Thus our dominant attractionis in the eyes of Prudence as important asour dominant temptation: it may be the magnetby which we are being drawn to the place wehave to fill. The creative method completesdetachment by attachment: "Leave all" requiresas its corollary "Follow me." It maytherefore be a work of Prudence to make tentativeadvances along a path which attracts us ;whether of prayer, study, active work, humanlove or renunciation. But when God, speakingthrough circumstances, says "That way isnot open," then it is for us humbly to acquiesce,whatever the cost. Love must learn by experienceto recognize when the secret inwardpressure comes from God, and when itcomes from self-will,reallyand we persuade ourselvesthat it is the push of God. Nothing ismore important than that we should faithfullyfollow our own true spiritual attraction ; developand use the talent given into our care. Butit needs a humble and a prudent spirit todiscover what that is, and distinguishit fromthe other more exciting kind of attractionwhich is really rooted in self-love.To do this is the work of Discretion, thehandmaid of Prudence : and the test that sheproposes is simple enough. "If God be thy love34

THE HOUSE OF THE SOULand thy meaning, the choice and point of thyheart," says the author of The Cloud of Unknowing,"it sufficeth to thee in this life."There, in a phrase, is the heart of HeavenlyPrudence. It requires a total transformation ofour attitude towards existence; because thechoice and point of our heart is set towards theEternal, our love and our meaning is God, andwe are running our house for Him. If wetest by this standard the dubious choices wehave made, the chances we have missed, theresponsibilities we have dodged, we shall perceivein each of them a virtual confession thatthe LivingPerfect and its interests were notreally the choice and point of our heart. Easypaths taken, awkward paths left ; a cowardlyinclination to take shelter behind circumstances.In personal relationships, a quiet avoidance ofthe uncongenial, a certain blindness to opportunitiesfor -exercising generous love. Inreligion, perverse insistence on particularnotions and practices ;self-chosen adventuresin devotional regions to which we were notPrudence, remembering thedecisively called.modest size of her own premises and thesublimity of those experiences of God whichthe mystics try with stammering tongues tosuggest, will always choose a simple type ofprayer suited to her capacity, and neverattempt that which isbeyond her powers; forshe has no spiritual ambition, beyond faithfulcorrespondence with God. How sober, morti-35

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULfied, truly discreet is the prayer of the saints;faithful, loyal, free from self-chosen peculiarities,keeping steadily on through darknessand through light.So too the detachment to which Prudencewill urge us will not merely consist in cuttingout those things and persons which attract us,and are occasions of temptation and unrest:thus eliminating the very material of selfdisciplinefrom life. It will rather require thepractice of detachment in attachment: usingwith love the educational toys in our cupboard,but refusing to make them into idols or breakintoangry howls when they are taken away.Prudence requires love without claimfulness,and service without self-will; cherishing andstudying the people placed within our radius,but even here, never seeking our own alongthe subtle paths of spiritual friendship. Shedemands a life that is both world-embracingand world-renouncing in itsamplitude of surrenderedlove. This means a constant anddifficult tension ; many falls, perhaps continuoussuffering, perpetual slaps to affection andpride. Again and again the unruly lowernature seems to be conquered ; again arid againit catches us out. It is one thing to makeLove's choice, and quite another to stick to it.Nevertheless this is the right way to handle theground-floor life not; eliminating its frictions,but usingits capacities,and gradually purifyingthe use of them from self-love. We can afford36

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULto have a warm and well-furnished kitchen, andeven to take pride in it, so long as we rememberthat it is a kitchen; and that all its activitiesmust be subservient to the interests of thewhole house, and its observance of the city'slaw,37

IllIF it is the special work of Prudence tomanage our basement premises, so run thedomestic life of the soul that all its willedchoices, the trend of its behaviour, subserve thepurposes of God it is the; special work ofTemperance to harness and control the naturaland subdue them to the same end.instincts,Temperance, says St. Thomas, is the Virtue ofthe Beautiful, the virtue which tempers andorders our vehement desires, and subjects evenour apparently spiritual cravings to the mortifyingaction of love for :moderation, proportion,reverence for conditions, is the very secret of alasting beauty. To worship the Lord in thebeauty of holiness does not mean the unbridledenthusiasm of the dervish, but the quiet andsteadfast loyalty of the saint.Temperance, then, must preside over thefurnishing of the soul's house, if it is to be thesetting of a useful, ordered, peaceful interiorlife. Much discipline, moderation, actual selfdenialare involved in wise furnishing.Nohurried purchase of the cheap or attractive,without considering the size and shape of ourrooms; no copying of our neighbour's interestingnew curtains, oblivious of the fact that theywill never live with pur dear old rugs; no38

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULfrenzied efforts to get a grand piano into a tworoomedflat. If the house is to be a success,what we leave out will be quite as important aswhat we putin. Abstine et sustine. At everyturn we are required to reconsider our firstnotions, accept our limitations, mortify ourdesires. It is useless to begin in a style that wecannot keep up; or, when we see what itinvolves, will want to keep up. We all knowrooms full of little vases, faded photographs,plush elephants, and shabby books of verse;relics of the owners' transient and uncontrolledimpulses.Those rooms lack all sense ofspace, tranquillity and dignity ;because Temperance,the strong virtue of the Beautiful,has not been called in. So too the furnishingof the soul's house depends for its successon a wise austerity. It requires a spirit ofrenunciation; checkingthat love of whatis new, odd or startling, which so easilykills the taste for quiet colour and simple(things, that tendency to accumulate oddsand ends which swamps our few real treasuresin a dusty crowd of devotional knick-knacks.The inner life does not consist in the abundanceand peculiarity of our spiritual possessions.There is nothing so foolish, snobbish,and in the end so disastrous as trying tofurnish beyond our means; forgetting ourcreaturely status, and the very moderateposition which our small house occupies inthe City of God.39

THE HOUSE OF THE SOULAgain, Temperance will lay a restraininghand on the speculative instinct, when it istempted to rush off to the horizons of thoughtor make fatuous efforts to achieve a "conceptof God"; forgetting, in its immoderate cravingfor sharper outlines or more light, the awfuland thedisparity between the infinite mysteryuseful but limited human mind, and the factthat it is under human conditions, in a humanworld, that God desires to maintain andtransfigure the soul. "The angels feed on Theefully," says the ancient prayer of the priestbefore Mass: "let pilgrim man feed on Theeaccording to his measure."Christianity insists that all we need and canassimilate will be given to us at home; theLight of the human world comingto us hereand now, as the Bread of Life. But it takes atemperate soul to savour all that lies hidden inthis sayingits moderation, homeliness, perfectadaptation to our creaturely needs True the. ,heavens declare the glory of the Lord ;but we,whirling along on our tiny bit of heaven, aremore overwhelmed than illuminated by thatmajestic revelation. We remain merely dazzledand bewildered till we consent to come off ourhigh horse, get our feet firmly on the earth, andlook here and now for the life-giving Realitymediated through earthly things. "I am theSon of man, that two-storied, half-madecreature. I do not despise the ground floorand its needs. I am the Bread of his little -life,40

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULthe Light of his little world: yet I and MyFather are one."Thus the characteristic mode of God's selfgivingto the human soul is declared to besomething which we can best compare to ourordinary necessary daily food; given to usdown right in the common life, and satisfying afundamental need which isindependent of feelingand taste. Man lives on God, is "renewedday by day by the Spirit"; by regular plaintaken here andmeals, offered and deliberatelynow, not by occasional moments of ecstaticcommunion. By solid food, not spiritualsweets. "He gave them bread from Heaven toeat." Only a soul disciplined to temperance canrelish all that there is to be found in bread. Itsexcursions and aspirations, its delightful ascentsto God, if legitimate and wholesome, mustalways bring it back to discover more savourand meaning in this plain, homely Bread of Life."You seek," says De Caussade, "the secretof union with God. There isno other secretbut to make use of the material God givesus." That material is mixed, like the environmentin which we find ourselves. Temperancewill teach us to acceptit as it comes to usnot arrogantly ignoring the visible in oursearch for the invisible, but rememberingthat the life of the city enfolds and penetratesboth. Here the greatest mystics have been themost temperate, and so most closely in touchwith the spirit of the New Testament. St.

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULFrancis finds in the difficulties and humiliL ctions of normal existence the essence of perfeLjoy. St. Teresa "desires no other prayer thJjfthat which makes her a better woman." T| nlatest in time of her daughters, St. Therese LLisieux, esteems "one sacrifice better than ai]ecstasy." Brother Lawrence is content tohis cooking in the Presence of God.Francois de Sales, when St. Chantal triesturn the conversation to spiritual channelhdirects her attention to the little tune the fooLman is singing outside the door. For all of the;1

:THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULrocious spring-clean, or gets in things from.e confectioner when she is expecting guests.[fany man open the door, I will come in tom"; share his ordinary meal, and irradiate's ordinary life. The demand for temperancesoul, for an acknowledgment of the sacredliaracter of the normal, is based on that factcentral Christian fact of the humblentrance of God into our common human life,he supernatural can and does seek and find, in and through our daily normal experience :e invisible in the visible. There is no need topeculiar in order to find God. The Magiere taught by the heavens to follow a star;nd itbrought them, not to a paralysingisclosure of the Transcendent, but to a littleoy on His Mother's knee.So too we observe how moderate, humble,ttuned to the scale of our daily life are all therucial events of the New Testament. Seenom the outside, none could have guessed theirlatter ing and transfiguring power. Thepocalyptists looked for a superhuman beingcoming in the clouds" they could not escaperom the idea of,the abnormal but the realvents which transformed the spiritual historyf man were startling only m their simplicity,"he quiet routine of a childhood and workingjfe in Nazareth; the wandering ministry ofCaching and compassion, with the least possibletress laid on supernatural powers ;the homelyjttle triumph of Palm Sunday; the pitiful43

THE HOUSE OF THE SOULsufferings of an arrest and execution toocommonplace to disturb the city's life. Christnever based His claim on strangeness:it is bywhat He is, rather than by what He does, thatHe awes, attracts, amazes.In spite of its contrasts between the sternand tender, how steadily temperate and centralin itsemphasis is all His :teaching full of thecolour and quality of real life, free from themerely startling, ever keeping close to ournormal experience. Sowing, reaping, breadmaking,keeping sheep; in these the secretsof the Kingdom are hid. He does not askHis disciples to speculate on the DivineNature, but to consider the lilies; it comes tothe same thing and is more suited to ourpowers. He looks at and studies these simpleand natural things with the eyes of sympatheticlove; because for Him the supernaturalindwells and supportsall natural things, notmerely abnormal or "religious" things. Thereforeeach and all of these natural things, madeby God and kept by God, can become supernaturalrevelations of His Spirit. We feelour Lord's complete understanding of thething- world in all its richness, beauty andpathos, His careful, reverent, tender observationof animals, birds and plants: yet, Hisentire aloofness from its clutch, the deepharmony of His Spirit with the very Spirit ofCreative Love. No cleavage here between thetwo levels of man's life: the spirit of the upper44

THEHOUSE OFTHE SOULfloor penetrates to every corner, and transfusesalike the most sacred and homely activities.The discourse in the 1 2th chapter of St.Luke is full of this temperate genial attitude tothe natural, in its contrast with that intemperanceof soul which alternates between anabsolute and inhuman detachment and usingthe world of things in a childish grasping way.It is a long varied lesson in the true realism.Consider that wonderful world of life in whichyou are placed, and observe that its greatrhythms of birth, growth and death all thethings that really matter are not in your control.That unhurried process will go forward inits stately beauty, little affected by your anxiousfuss. Find out, then, where your treasure reallyis. Discern substance from accident. Don't confuseyour meals with your life, and yourclothes with your body. Don't lose your headover what perishes, Nearly everything doesperish: so face the facts,don't rush after thetransient and unreal. Maintain your soul intranquil dependence on God; don't worry;don't mistake what you possess for what youare.Accumulating things is useless. Both mentaland material avarice are merely silly in viewof the dread facts of life and death. The WhiteKnight would have done better had he left hisluggage at home. The simpler your house, theeasier it will be to run. The fewer the thingsand the people you "simply must have," thenearer you will be to the ideal of happinessD45

THE HO USE OFTHE SOUL"as having nothing, to possess all." We observehow exquisitely the whole doctrine is keptwithin the boundaries of our natural experience;how it tends to deepen this given experiencerather than escape from it. Man is being taughthow to run that ground-floorlife which hecannot get rid of and must not ignore; yettaught by one in whom the other life shineswith unmatched perfection, whose wholepersonality radiates God.If now we consider how we ourselves standin respect of this virtue of Temperance, wediscover that it must bring its sobering realisminto our social, personal, and spiritual life.peaceful acceptance of facts must colour all ourrelations with others, all our dealings withourselves, all our responses to God.First, in relation to others Temperancerequires a quiet refusal to capitulate to feverishand distracting emotions ;intense attractionsand intense hostilities. It means a temperingof ground-floor passions to the needs of theupstairs life; that check upon vehementimpulse, that ordering of love, which involvesits absolute dissociation from claimfulness,clutch and excess. The love which the Saintspour out is a gentle and genial sunshine;.never fierce, concentrated, intemperate. Thosewho come to the soul's house should find itnicely warmed all over; its inner chamber mustnot be like one of those rooms which have afierce little gas stove in one corner, and aIts

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULdeadly chill everywhere else. Custodia cordis,the secret of an ordered life, involves themaintenance of an even temperature; and arefusal to rush out upon a flood of inordinatefeeling towards certain persons, deeds andthings, instead of taking what comes to ustranquilly, with a light hand.Again, theological views, and political loyalties,must all be subject to the rule of temperance;killing presumption, intolerance andthe spirit of controversy, acknowledging ateach point the fragmentary and relativecharacter of all human knowledge and thereforethe peril and absurdity of absolute judgmentsand scornful criticisms of the opinions of othermen. So too the restless, energetic desire toget things done, the impetuous determinationto remodel the world nearer to our own hearts'desire, the exaggerated importance we attributeto our own action, the emphasis placed ondoing, to the detriment of being all this mustbe mortified if calm and order are to rule thelower floor. We shall never create a home-likeatmosphere unless we consent to spend sometime in our own home; and, were a betterbalance struck between our inward life and ouroutward activities, the result would at once beseen in the improved quality of that outwardwork. Like Peter's wife's mother, while thefever is on us we cannot really serve our fellowmen.I often think that when St. Paul wrote his47

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULclassic list of the fruits of the Spirit he gave usunconsciously a wonderful account of his owngrowth in this spiritual realism. We shouldhardly think of the virtue of Temperance asspecially characteristic of St. Paul, and even tothe end of his days he probably found it difficult;yet in this he discovers the final proof of theworking of Creative Spirit in his soul. Hebegins upona note of convinced fervour. "Thefruit the harvest of the .Spirit is Love, Joy,Peace." No three words could better expressthat rich beatitude which, in his holiestmoments, has flooded his soul. Then he pauses,We seem to see him thinking: "After all, I don'talways feel like that. Things are often very trying.I don't seem able to love ; peace and joy areunobtainable ;I feel another law in my memberswarring against the law of my mind. Yet theindwelling Spiritis still there: to live is Christ.How does that Spirit act on my troubled spiritin those less expansive moments? Surely inthe long-suffering, gentleness and kindnesswhich I know must control all my reactions tothe world of men." They were not the reactionswhich St. Paul found specially easy. We seethe yoke being laid on his stormy instinctivenature: the love that is easy on the upperfloor being brought downstairs, to prove itselfin the common life.At last, at the very end, we reach thoseunexpected characters which are the earnestof his total transformation in the Spirit.

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULFidelity, Meekness, Moderation :an unsensationalbut unbroken loyalty to the infinite lifeand purpose which had made him its own, anacceptance of its gradual pace, a refusal, tohurry, a restraining of the impetuous desireto get everything possible out of those newconverts who were only babies still, and tell thecandid truth to those who had let him downthese are the real fruits of his subjection to God.Paul, whose first idea had been to breathe fireand slaughter upon the Christians, and whosesecond idea had been to be "all out" for Christwho was quite as obsessed as we are by thevision of all that there was to do, and the sensethat he was called uponto do itlearns thatthe final gift of the Spirit is not intensity of life,but Temperance. "The servant of the Lordmust not strive." Hurry, bustle, anxiety toget things done an immoderate demand for;perfection and consequent nervous wear andtear ;the wasteful use of the premises given usby God, are all condemned.Next, we are called to be temperate asregards the standard by which we estimateourselves ;which must neither be too degradednor too exalted for our status. We are neitherangels nor devils, but half-achieved, unstablecreatures ; alternately pulled towards the higherand the lower life.Temperance, therefore, willnot take too ferocious a view of our inevitablefluctuations. It will not judge the state of ourhouse|by its ground floor alone or its upper49

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULrooms alone ;but by both. The ground floor,to the very end, will partake of the imperfectionof nature. It isgood and humbling thatthis should be so : and we should bring a certaingenial patience to acceptance of the facts,bearing evenly our own uneven performances.Our part is to manage the household wisely,without overstraining its resources ;if we do, itwill have its revenge. So we are required to bereasonable both in what we refuse to nature andwhat we demand from it ; temperate in renunciationas well as enjoyment, in supersensibleas well as sensible activities. The spirituallifeconstantly draws upon the resources of thenatural life; much nervous energyis used inprayer, especially absorbed or difficult prayer.Therefore we should treat our limited powerswith reverence, avoiding wasteful overstrain.Further, we should arrange our housework on areasonable plan not ; letting ourselves in for awhole day's scrubbing, and then in our desperationresorting to strong soda and harsh soap,After all, the interior life needs no sensationalmeasures. It requires only our gentle andfaithful collaboration with God, in fitting thehuman nature He has given us for Him;gradually making the whole house ready forthat Spiritwhich is tranquillity and peace.Thus temperance in regard to ourselvesinvolves temperance as towards God; anavoidance of the devotional strain and clutchwe sometimes mistake for fervour; a humble50

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULrecognition of our limits in respectof thatcommunion with Him which we can enjoy.wisdom is aThe beginning of all spiritualrealization of the moderate character of oursituation the vast distance between even themost illuminated soul and those mysteries ofthe Being of God on which the seraphs did notdare to look. Temperance suggests to us howawestruck and humble, how full of adorationour demeanour should be, over against thatunsearchable Reality; how moderate and childlikeour choice of religious objectives andpractices. We are not to "ransack the DivineMajesty" as the old mystics had it, but meeklyaccept the revelation of Himself that Hegives us; never arrogantly seeking more lightthan we can bear, or more food than we candigest."Well, Sadie,"said an American mother toher little girl,who was devouring everythingwithin reach, "I reckon you won't long havethe use of that breakfast." There are intemperatedevotional meals to which the same riskis attached. It is left to us to feed our soulswisely and carefullynot too many spiritualsweets, not too much effervescent emotion. Weare to be content with the food we find suits usstrengthens us, makes us grow not makewild efforts to get the food we like best. Norare we to be fastidious in our rejection of everythingwe do not think "essential," until wereach what we choose to regard as a "purelySi

THE HOUSE OF THE SOULspiritual" type of prayer. Our ghostly insidesare much like our natural insides ; they need acertain amount of what doctors call ' ' ' 'roughage ,and seldom thrive on too refined a diet.The homely mixed food, the routine meals,of institutional religion, keep our digestions ingood order. Particularlyat times when we aredrawn to fervour, or our spiritual sensibilityseems to transcend the average level, we need thewholesome corrective of the common religiousdiet, the average practice, with itsrough andready adaptation to ordinary needs and limitations,to remind us that we are hot pure spiritsyet. In that excellent parable, The History ofSir John Sparrow, a logical insistence on thereduction of his food to its essential constituentsat last left the hero face to face with a saucer ofcanary seed. He had proved that it containedall the human body needed ;but somehow theposition was not a satisfactory one. ThereforeTemperance will restrain us from simplifyingor etherealizing our religious diet overmuch.We are mixed feeders, and must do as ourfellows. Fastidious choices, special paths, lookrather ridiculous in the "perpetual brightclearness of Eternity."The light which bathes the paintings of theUmbrian masters, and gives them their profoundtranquillity,is not a vivid illumination.It reveals no distant detail, creates no violentcontrasts. Yet we feel that its gentle radiance,softening all harsh outlines, comes from beyond52

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULthe world in its unearthly beauty and ; quietenseverything on which it falls. It stills all passionand intensity, reprovesall haste: gives thecalm beauty of holiness even to the anguishof the Cross. That is the light in which thesoul's life, world, prayer, should be bathed:harmonizing nature and spirit in its lovely,temperate radiance. The Heaven of Temperance,says Dante, is the home of the contemplativesaints. In its soil the ladder isplanted on which they ascend to the Vision ofGod. For Temperance, stilling those excessesof desire, those self-actuated struggles, whichhinder the silent working of Creative Spirit inthe soul, finds its perfect work in that quietude,humility and suppleness which are the onlypreparation of prayer.53

IVWHAT is the final need of our groundfloorpremises, if they are to bear theweight of the upper story; the thrust andpressure of the supernatural life The ? Saintsreply, with one voice: Fortitude, strength,staying-power! To be "stablished, strengthened,settled" not etherealized, exalted,illuminated is St. Peter's supreme desire forhis converts. It is^the sober ambition of arealist who has known in his own person theso establish the soul'sdisasters that await a fervour based on feelingrather than will. The perfect work of Prudenceand Temperanceis to make our natural humanity"strong in the Lord" ;house on the rock, and make its walls solid,that it can carry those strange upper workswhich are part of the builder's design.The ground floor, rising up from the naturalorder, is subject to its law of consequence ; allthe vicissitudes of circumstance, health, opportunity,the ebb and flow of energy and inclination,the temperamental reaction of the soulswith whom we must live. Through these, Godreaches us, deals with us, trains us; and tothe uttermost. That living Spirit pressingsoinsistently on our spirits, filling with its spacelesspresence every room of the soul's house,54

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULcomes yet to us in and through natural circumstance;and makes of this circumstance,however homely, the instrument of its purifyingpower.The touch of the eternal reaches usmost often through the things of sense. Weare called to endure this ceaseless divine action ;not with a sullen stoicism, but With a livinggrateful patience. The events by which we arethus shaped and disciplined are often as muchas the natural creature can bear. God comesto the soul in His working clothes, and bringsHis tools with Him. We need fortitude if weare to accept with quietness the sharp blowsand persistent sandpapering which bring ourhalf-finished fitments up to the standard requiredby the city's plan. But it is this steadyendurance, born of the humble sense thateverything which happens matters, yet onlymatters because it mediates God, and offers anever to be repeated opportunity of improvingour correspondence with God, which more andmore makes the house fit to be a habitation ofthe Spirit.It is not a week-end cottage. Itmust be planned and organized for life, thewhole of life, not for fine weather alone. Hencestrong walls and dry cellars matter more thanmany balconies or interesting garden design.The winds will blow and the floods come tothe very end; overwhelming events, wild galesof feeling and impulse, will sweep round thewalls. The doors will bang and windowsrattle. The bitter, cold and penetrating waters55

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULof disappointment and grief will rise.But thelittle house will stand firm, if it is establishedon the solid rock of spiritual realism ;not thesoft easily-dug ground of spiritual sentiment.Its foundations must go down into the invisibleworld of prayer: something of the steadfastnessof the Unchangingmust underlie our humanchangefulness. The balance between thedifferent parts, with their compensatingthrusts and strains, must keep the walls true.If one becomes excessive, and pushes too much,the house may fall.That the soul's self-giving prayer and workshould be really costly and difficult, shouldand made fit tocall for the putting out of a definite degree ofeffort, should involve a certain tension andeven painall this is surely good. The job thatis done quite easily is seldom done quite well.However we conceive it whether as pilgrimage,or growth the spiritual life of man isnever without an element of conflict. Effortand endurance must enter deeply into theprocess by which our mixed beingis harmonized,simplified, expanded,be the instrument of God. For those in whomthere is a pronounced disharmony betweennatural temperament and supernatural call,the struggle may be bitter until the very end;and it is better that it should so continue thanthat we should harmonize ideal and achievementon a lower level than the best possible,and so false to the city's building-law. We are56

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULnot to yield an inch to the bungalow-ideal ofhuman character. But this rightful interiortension should never threaten our spiritualequilibrium. When Fortitude begins to becoloured by strain, and action tends to becomewe agitation, are approaching the danger zoneof the soul's life. That soul is required to bea "fixed abode for God through the Spirit";and for this, something of the stillpeace of theEternal, "never changing state into the contrary"must toughen its fragility, temper itsrestlessness. The paradox of peaceful strivingruns right through the New Testament.Fortitude means the achievement, even on thenatural level, of an inward stability whichtranscends the world of change. The small sizeof our premises matters little, if the walls areweather-proof and stand firm.Such fortitude is not the virtue of the dashingsoldier. It means rather the virtue of thekeeper of the fortress; the inconspicuousheroism that sits tight.And in the life of thespirit there is a great deal of sitting tight of;refusing to be frightened out of it or decoyedaway from it; of refusing to despair, waitingtill the weather improves,till business getsbrisker, day breaks, the shadows lift. Wemust endure a mysterious pressure, whichoperates more often and more purely in darknessthan in light.We cannot take up thesoul's privileges and responsibilities as a householderof the Spiritual City, merely by paying57

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULone instalment and getting immediate deliveryof all the goods we desire, with an insurancepolicy protecting us from risk so that there;isnothing to do but settle down cosilyin ourfreshly furnished rooms. That citizenship isthe beginning of a new life ;a total sublimationof experience, in which all life's tensions andpossibilities are raised to a higher term. Moredemand on prudence and initiative, keenerstruggle than before a new; capacity for joy,but also a new capacity for pain. It meansincorporation in that Mystical Body, throughwhich the awful saving power of God ispouredout on the world: and taking our small sharein filling up the measure of those sufferingsby which alone redeeming work is done. TheHoly City stands on a rock but in the midst of;a world of sin and pain. And the price ofcitizenship, as regards contact with that world,is likely to include suffering and loneliness,much misunderstanding, much self-giving withlittle apparent result. It may go further, andrequire that entire and pure act of resignation,that self-oblation even to the uttermost, whichwas once accomplished in Gethsemane, andremains the clue to the whole redeeming andcreative life. The soul needs Fortitude, if it isto take up that great vocation.Baron von Hiigel speaks gratefully in one ofhis letters of "Mylittle old life which God hasdeigned to train by not a few trials." It is thisdeeply grateful recognition of the Divine58

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULaction, as specially discovered in those disciplinessufferings, which teach Fortitude toandthe soul, and toughenit to take its share in thesacrificial action of the Body of Christ, whichdistinguishes from the devotee the trulyawakened spirit, the living acting member ofthe Communion of Saints. An uncalculatingsurrender of our own premises to the generalpurpose, losing all individual preferences andreluctances in the vast outlines of God'smysterious design, is the condition of thatmembership and to be able to make this willed:surrender is the most solemn dignity of thehuman soul. It means a sober willingness torenounce allspiritual enjoyments, in order totakeup the burden of the world's wrongness ;put up in our own persons with the results. Allmust suffer ;the lesson of Christianity is whatcan be done with suffering,when it is met withself-oblivious courage and love."To him that overcometh ispromised Angels'Food: and to him that is overcome, muchmisery," says Thomas a Kempis. The breakingof bread, without the cup of the Passion, isonly half the Eucharistic secret. We do notunderstand that secret till we see the Eucharistand the Cross as two aspects of one indivisibleact. The communicant ismerely what St. Johnof the Cross roughly calls a "spiritual glutton"unless this rich mysterious action involves forhim a complete and sacrificial self-giving forthe saving purposes of God ;unless he makes59

THE HOUSE OF THE SOULhis tiny contribution to that perfect work ofcharity, which is the eternal act of Christ.The supernatural food is given, the littleseparate life fed and enhanced, that it may begathered, itself a lively sacrifice, into the greatsacrificial movement of the Divine life. "Hethat eateth dwelleth hi Me, and I in him." Butthe energy thus received from beyond the worldmust be met by the soul's self-oblivious fortitude,its spirit of steadfast endurance, stayingpower. Fervour is not enough. We need thegrit that puts things through in spite ofapparent failure or the shrinking horror of theflesh : that achieves its victory by way of thelonely darkness of the Garden, the more lonelyand terrible darkness which fell at middayupon the Cross. Those whose courage andfidelity failed at the first withering touch of thePassion had just experienced in their ownpersons the solemn and touching mystery onwhich the Church lives still.By it tneir spiritswere made willing; but their flesh was weak.And however great the peace and joy thatwelcome the soul when it elects for the spirituallife, it will not be long before it, too, experiencesthe fundamental need of Fortitude if it is tobe faithful to the supernatural call. Its trueinitiation into the realities of that call comeswith the first secret stand-up fight with atemptation, desire, or attachment that trulyattracts it; the first deliberate sacrificial deathto sin and self. That means deep suffering,60

THE HOUSE OF THE SOULwhatever form it takes : and included in it isthe temptation to abandon a jobthat seemsbeyond our feeble powers.The soul, said Coventry Patmore, "dies uponthe Cross every time it resists interior temptationeven to despair." We must be crucified tothe world, the downward pull, not once, butagain and again because the conflict between;the two lives persists in us till holiness is reached.The Cross stands on the frontier between thenatural and supernatural worlds. Thus thebracingof natural character isessential if weare to bear the tensions of the supernaturallife. It is a stern business. It enters intoconflict, it goes on being in conflict, with allin us that is turned toward the world. Theprinciples of Christianity are absolute; theyreflect Eternity. The principlesof the worldmay be judicious, amiable, beneficent. Butthey are contingent: they arise from, and areadapted to, a world of change. Christianitylooks beyond the world's flux to God, theunchanging Reality. It seeks the increasingincarnation of His Spirit ;and for that sakeaccepts a standard of purity, renunciation andforgiveness alien to the interests of the world.Thus, to live in the world and not of it andthis is the situation for which our house is maderequires much fortitude, a love that is loyaland courageous rather than demonstrative:"not worn out with labours, not daunted withany difficulties."E 61

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULWe are committed to a swaying battle, notan easy victory; and our worst enemies arethose of our own house. Again and again ourtemperamental devils will be too much for us;ingrained habits, inherited tendencies, willfling us into the dungeon of impotent despair,It is with our spiritual as with our physicalmaladies. When we have faithfully used allrightful means of healing, a certain residuummay remain; some humiliating weakness, orchronic malformation we cannot cure, but canmake an occasion of patience, courage, surrender."Fear none of those things thou shaltsuffer." If our first experienceof the life ofspirit comes with the lovely glow of victorywhich rewards a bit of costly self-conquest;perhaps the second, and more real experiencecomes when we attempt a further strugglewith our unfortunate ground-floor conditionsin our own strength, and fail abjectly. Forthen we are thrown back upon God, the onlysource of strength and; abruptly reminded thatcontempt of self is said to be the city's law."When I am weak, then I am strong." TheMiserere, the classic poem of penitence, is allabout this paradoxical power of the soul whichabides in its own nothingness; the abandonmentas it were of all trust in its own poorindividualized bit of moral energy, and thereceiving instead of a mysterious participationin the Spirit of living strength.Certainly our own preliminary effort and62

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULarestruggle needed. Fortitude does notmerely consist in waiting about but in a real;pacing of the will to courageous action. It isto him that overcometh that the fruit of theTree of Life is given. "Will and grace rise andall together." Ghostly strength is like one ofthose funds to which the Government adds 1for every pound subscribed voluntarily. It isthe reward of really trying to do or bear somethingfor God; not of wanting to do or bearsomething. As even the most impressive viewfrom the hotel terrace tells nothing of the realsecret of the mountains, which is only impartedto those who will turn their backs on comfort,take the risks; so the passive appreciationofthe spiritual landscape, the agreeable readingof mystical books fruit of the courage andlove of other souls, but making no demand onours gives us no genuine contact with thethings of God. We must put on our own boots,face the early start and long slow plod throughthe lower pastures, where the mountains areseldom in view make a rule of life, and practiseit in the teeth of reluctance and discouragementif we want to share the life of themountaineer; know the strange rapture ofcommunion with the everlasting hills."No one can come to the sublime heights ofhe Divinity," said the voice of the EternalWisdom to Suso, "if they have not experiencedthe bitterness and lowliness of My humanity."That is the soul's testing ground. It is there,63

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULunder ordinary human conditions and subjectto their humbling limitations, that itgets itstraining for the heights; purges its love ofcomfort, learns patience, shows its grit. Thereit discovers that fortitude does not mean anyspectacular display of gallantry;but stickingit out in fog and storm, loneliness and disillusiongoing on and on, in spite of the cuts andbruises to affection, dignity and self-esteem,never unnerved by the endless tumbles, thedull fatigue, through which it must ascendin heart and mind, accomplish the work oisacrifice and prayer. Fortitude means the courageof the lonely soldier in an isolated cornerthe courage of one whose friends deserted Hinin the crisis ;with the Will ofGod .the courage of the naked will alonfManhood isincomplete tilit has known the agony of spiritual isolation ira crowded world : endured with fortitude th

hourTHE HOUSE OFTHE SOULhorror of the austere side of the spiritual life,test and brace their growing spirits,make themcapable of its full privileges and responsibilities.Little quarter is given to those in whom thistotal transformation is begun. "His Majesty,"says the ever-valiant Teresa, "loves a courageoussoul"; and, old and very ill, strugglingin the teeth of circumstance to make her lastfoundation at Burgos, she hears the inner voicewhich has been the support of all her labours,saying "Now, Teresa, be strong!" So too theangel,who visited, Suso in the . of hisutmost trial >did not offer him a devotionalaspirin; but merely made the astringent remark"Behave like a man!" That was Suso'simmediate task; the way in which his soul wascleansed and strengthened, and brought to "theUpper School of Perfect Self-abandonment."So our survey of the ground floorof thesoul's house brings us to the acceptance of thisideal of a disciplined normal humanity, deepenedand organized, "stablished, strengthened,settled," as the true basis of a spiritual life.The peaceful, temperate and balanced employmentin God of those natural faculties andopportunities committed to us, choosing withself-oblivious love what helps, rememberingthat excess mogt often hinders, bearing andenduring all that the choice of His interestsentails ;this must bring order to our downstairslife, if the home is ever to be fit for its guest."Peace," says St. Thomas Aquinas,65"is the

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULtranquillity of order; disquiet diminishes assanctity increases." And if there is onecharacteristic which marks a genuine spiritualexperience, that characteristic is surely the deeppeace in which it places the soul. Thus acertain slowing down and spacing out of ourceaseless clockwork activities is a necessarycondition of the deepening and enrichment oflife. The spirit of Joy and the spirit of Hurrycannot live in the same house. But Joy, notHurry, is an earnest of the Presence of God;an attribute of the creative life.Without the steadying influences of Prudence,Temperance and Fortitude, without thewise austerity of feeling, thought and willwhich these require, who can hope to be quiet,and so prepare a habitation for that serene Spiritof Joy which is God ? Without these, we are perpetuallytormented by indecision, weakened byexcesses, discouraged by failures; the trials anddarkness which form part of the life of prayerdefeat instead of bracing us, the very richness oiexperience and opportunity through which Godmoulds our characters, bewilders us. It is nottill the ground floor is in goodorder that weacquire the priceless art of doing one thing a)a time, and doingit with total dedication, whiclis the foundation of an ordered life. The sensiof cleavage between the duties of Mary an

THE HOUSE OF THE SOULwhole house is devoted to one interest, anda working harmonyis established betweenthe upper and the lower floor, each action, howeverhomely, has the quality of prayer; sinceevery corner and all that is done in it is informedby God and tends to God. It is the work ofPrudence to discern and acceptall that Heproposes; because however odd it seems, it isthe apt means of the soul's contact with Him.It is the work of Temperance to resist thetemptation to bring in other things, crowd thesoul's life with loves, labours, or devotions nottruly proposed to it by God. It is the workof Fortitude to endure His moulding actionwith tranquillity, and maintain our steadfastcorrespondence with His will. In the secretworld of self-conquest, in all dealings with circumstancepeople, opportunities, trials, tasksand in the most hidden experiences of thespirit, it is on this triplesoul's deepfoundation that theaction must rest. Here is the solidbasis of that truly mortified and tranquilcharacter which can bear the stress and burdenof the supernaturallife.

VWE go on to consider the upper floor of thesoul's house ;the home of those facultieswhich point beyond our here-and-now existence,which are capable of God, tend towardsGod, and only find their full meaning in God.We have seen what we have to do in the way oftransmuting the powers and instincts whichrule the natural life. Behaviour, Impulse, Enduranceaspects of our living correspondencewith the natural order must all be purified,sublimated, if the house is to become a solidhabitation of the Spirit if its walls are to bear;the thrust of the upperfloor. But the life ofnature, even in its perfection, is not enoughin itself. It makes an admirable bungalow but;the City of Mansoul isnot a bungalow town.Though it is based on the purification, thetransmutation of our common earthborn nature,more than moralityis needed for the purposesof the spirituallife. That life requires the transfigurationin God of the upper floor and itsspecial powers the stuff of personality, the"superior faculties of the soul," as the oldpsychologists say and this :is the peculiar workof Faith, Hope and Charity, the three "supernaturalvirtues" which imply God, tend to God,and take the soul beyondits own resourcesinto Him. By Faith we mean the lifting up into68

THE HOUSE OF THE SOULGod of our natural human power of understandingthe world ; by Hope, the state in whichour whole mental content, our "apperceivingmass" is penetrated and transmuted by ourconfident expectation of Him ; by Charity, thatglowing friendship between Creator andcreated, which merges our will in His will.Thus all three are forms of one thirst forultimate Being, the drive of personality towardsGod ;and at their fullness merge into oneact or state ,which lifts the soul up and out beyonditself and the interests of its own small house,and beyond all merely utilitarian and thisworldnotions of goodness, to something morea certain loving participationin Eternal Life.For this, to make a home for the soul's adoringvision, confidence, and love, the house ofhumanity is built and kept in order. Theprudence, moderation, steadfast endurancewhich control its domestic life, the constantdeath to self which they entail, are worth while,simply because they support this other life;the life that flowers in Faith, Hope and Charity,and thus incarnates something of the Eternal ;the life which is in its fullest sense the life ofprayer. For real prayer is simply the expressionand the experience of Faith, Hope and Charity ;each penetrating and enhancing the other, andmerging to form in us that state of energeticand loving surrender, in which our spirits haveaccording tothe Spirit of God.their measure communion with69

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULThus an outlook upon the world controlledby Faith is the privilege of every house that isestablished in the City of God. It means thetranscending of our limited anthropocentricoutlook; being lifted up to a certain participationin the universal Divine outlook. Thosewho "in heart and mind thither ascend andwith Him continually dwell" change theirangle of vision ;see the world and all things init from His point of view. A tremendous changefrom our ordinary way of seeing and thinkingtakes place then. We gaze with cleansed sight onthe world we are placed in,and the life we areprivileged to lead in it; perceive its richnessand mystery,its utter dependence on God.Faith often so cheaply equated with merebelief issomethingthe soul's watch-tower ;far more than this. It isa solitary place at thetop of a steep flight of stairs. Those stairs, forsome souls, have almost the character of theWay of the Cross so ; humbling are the falls, sodisconcerting the evidence of our human weakness,so absolute the stripping, and so completethe sacrifice which is asked as the price of theof sensitiveascent. Bit by bit, all the wrappingsnature must be left behind. And even for thoseto whom the way lies open, and ofwhom thisutter denudation is not asked, it is sometimes agreat effort to go up. The stairs are steep; weare, or think that we are, very busy. We knowthat if we do go,it must be with purified sight,clear of prejudice and of distracting passions,70

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULempty of our selves; for only in emptiness ofspirit, as Ruysbroeck says, can we receive thatIncomprehensible Light which is "nothingelse but a fathomless gazing and seeing." Withso little leisure and so languid an inclination, itseems better to mutter a few prayers whilst wetidy the kitchen; content ourselves with thebasement view of the world, and rationalizethis interior laziness as humility of soul.But if we do make the effort needed for thatascent, what a revelation !Busy on the groundfloor, we never realized that we had a place likethis ;that our small house shot up so high intoHeaven. We find ourselves, as it were, in a littleroom with a window on each side. There is noguarantee as to what any one soul will see out ofthose windows, for there is always far more tosee than we can apprehend. Nor is the view onany one day equally good out of each window.Sometimes it is the homely detail in the foregroundthat we notice seen now in new;proportion,from a fresh point of view. Sometimesthat is forgotten, and the eyeis drawn to thegreatness and beauty of the distant hills. Sometimesthe countrylies before us hard and clearas a map; at others, a delicate haze givesmystery to the landscape of faith. The light,too, is variable. Sometimes the heavenly sunshinestreams in with overwhelming splendour.We are warmed, dazzled, delighted ; though wesee nothing distinctly, the lovely radiancebrings its own assurance. Sometimes we go up,

THE HOUSE OF THE SOULto find a grey day. The view is there, but allseems cheerless; there is no joy in our faith.This does not mean that we had better godownstairs. The upper room is more than adevotional sun- trap. Faith seeks the enlightenmentof the understanding, whatever paincomes with it; and shirks no truth, howeverbewildering, which is shown to it by God. Itmeans a share in the outlook of one who rejoicedin spirit, yet was sorrowful even untodeath ;whose rich experience embraced spiritualvision and spiritual darkness too. Thevariations of the weather, then, should nevercontrol our faith.Though the landscape in which our watchtowerstands is really continuous, the twowindows seem to us to look out on differentand contrasting worlds. The soul can neverpeer round the corner, and see the point atwhich they meet. Moreover, the windowsthemselves are not always the same size. Somehave a great casement opening to the north,which reveals vast expanses of sky. Others,as St. Bernard says, only have narrow slitsthrough which the rays of the Eternal Lightcome in ;but these may have a big bow windowon the other side of the tower.The northward view is a view of infinitespaces a wild and solemn landscape overagainst us, which seems without meaning forthe little lives of men a desert country full ofstrange beauty, which leads the eye outward to72

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULthe horizon ;and shows it, at an awful distance,the peaks of great mountains hanging inthe air. Here the soul looks out with adorationto the vast uncharted continent of theDivine. For some, this is the window that exercisesa perpetual attraction ;the view exhilarateswhile it daunts them, the mysteryin its incomparablemajesty is friendly though august.It is God Pure, the soul's country, the Tran-notscendent World in itself, that they crave for ;the bit made over to the use of man. This it iswhich wakes their awestruck and delightedadoration, nourishes their souls. The stellarradiance in which they see it is more desirableof earth. It liftsthan the sunny landscapesthem beyond all conflict, all self-occupation,and fills them with a solemn joy. "Thou art!"cries St. Augustine as he gazes from this window,"and art God and Lord of all that Thouhast created; and in Thy sight stand fast theand the fountains ofcauses of the transient,the changeable abide unchanged!"Even though the revelation comes seldom,for this is the outlook which is most oftenclouded, the souls who are possessed by thisthirst for the Unchanging are content to kneelby the window, and know that the unspeakablesplendour of the Eternal is there. "Here," saysRuysbroeck, "our reason abides with open eyesin the darkness; that is, in an abysmal ignorance.And in this darkness, the abysmalSplendour remains covered and hid from us,73

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULfor its unsearchable infinitude blinds our reason,but its simplicity and selfhood enfold andtransform us." Thus even those who have yetseen nothing from this window should resistthe temptation to veil its gaunt outline incurtains embroidered with symbolic designs.and waitAs travellers who go up to Darjeelingfor many days to see the majestic vision of theHimalaya at dawn, a moment will come when,if they wait long enough and look high enough,they will see the mighty summits hanging inthe air; and, after that, the world will never bethe same to them again. "It is far better," saysSpinoza, "to know that God's Perfections areinfinite, than to persuade ourselves that weknow what those Perfections are." It wassurely for the refreshment of that vision, arenewal of that still and joyous gazing onEternal Life, that our Lord went up alone intothe mountain to pray. Strength and patience,a renewed sense of proportion, come fromcommunion with that wide horizon, that skyof uncounted stars: a wholesome humblingsense of the contrast between our tiny houseand the life it shelters, and the steadfastmystery of the heavens with their unknownworlds. "The utmost that we know of God,"says St. Thomas, "is nothing in respect of thatwhich He is."Such an outlook on the Unchanging redeemsour prayer from pettiness, discounts ourworries, brings a solemn selfless peace. Every-74

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULthing drops away except awe, longing, andhumility. "Whom have I in heaven but thee?and there is none upon earth that I desirebeside thee." The soul stands over against theeternal reality of the Universe, and finds therea friend and not a void. Dens metis! My God!We have, in our creaturely weakness, a personalThe Psalms arehold upon Infinite Reality.full of this exultant certitude. "O God, thouart my God! earlywill I seek thee!" St.Augustine is ever recurring to such thoughts:isolating, gazing at, the Fact of God. Thus todwell upon the great key-words of religion givesdepth and width to human prayer clarifies the;sight with which we look out upon the sky.We turn to the window on the other side ofFaith's tower. That looks out upon our homely,natural, changeful world. It shows us humanlife, conditions, problems, from the angle offaith; and the mystery of the Eternal selfrevealedin human ways. That too is a wonderfuland inspiring sight, enlightening theunderstanding. Though clouds passover thatlandscape, storms come, seasons change,ityet seen to be full of God's glory. The sameunchanging light and life bathes the world wesee out of each window. Jungle and city,church and market-place, the most homely andthe most mysterious aspects of creation, areequally known as works of the Wisdom of God.From this window the earth with itsintricate life is perceived in the light75isof the

THE HOUSE OF THE SOULIncarnation; God self-disclosed in and withus, as well as God over against us. The depthand mystery of Reality, its stern yet lovingaction,are revealed within the limitations ofhistory, and in the here-and-now experienceof men. We pierce the disconcerting veil ofappearance, and discern that Holy Creativity,making, rectifying, and drawing all things toitself. At times a lovely glint transfigures eventhe smallest living things. We see the kittenplay in Paradise. The humble inhabitants ofthe hedgerows suddenly reveal their origin,their kinship with God. At other times adeeper secret, the little rillgolden of Holinesswelling up from beyond the world of visiblelife, is glimpsed by us in the most unexpectedsituations. Yet there is no pink glass in thiswindow. It blurs none of the dread facts; theever-present evil, the baffling pain, the conflictand apparent failure and inequality of life.But from the angle of Faith these are seen inproportion, as material for the self-imparting ofGod; and for man's self-giving to God trulythe clatter oftabernacled among us. Throughthe world, Faith hears an insistent call topurity and sweetness and discerns in the;tangleof life the perpetual emergence of an otherworldlybeauty, which has its source and end inHim alone.Even from the ground-floor level, all personsof goodwill can realize the moral beauty anddeep human pathos of the Gospels the ; pattern

.FTHE HOUSE OFTHE SOULof behaviour put before us in Christ, and againand again incarnate in the Saints. But Faith, -ascending in heart and mind, sees here theLiving Real self-revealed in human ways tohuman creatures; and in every scene andmystery of this life a natural and a supernaturalquality-^-light cast on the meaning ofour strange human experience, as the mediumof God's secret moulding action, and on Hisway with the growing souls of men. By this"living way" as the writer of Hebrews says,and through the veil of this humanity, we penetrateto the Holiest. It isby going upstairs andgazing out of that window that we regain poise,courage and peace when our own human experienceseems too much for us : for there we see itlitby a supernatural light, and one walkingthrough that earthly landscape in all thingstempted as we are yet without sin, who humblesand convicts us on the one hand strengthensand refreshes us on the other hand. As a greatartist, taking from the natural world the formand raw material of his picture, is loyal andreverent in accepting the limits of that material,subordinating his freedom to the stuff in whichhe works, and only thus conveys the message ofhis spirit ;so God here gives man a picturewoven of the stuff of human history andexperience, which is a full and perfect revelationof His eternal Spirit in human terms.Faith lifts us to the level at which we can seethis, and more and more vividly as our eyes.77

THE HOUSE OF THE SOULgrow clearer:shows us the express image ofthe Eternal Perfect revealed in a human life,of which the various and serial action dependson an unchanging contemplation of God.Above all in the mysterious power and holinessof sacrifice, the Cross, transfiguring and liftingup the created soul though in utmost pain,darkness and confusion to a share in thecreative work of God, it finds the one enduringlink between the natural and the supernaturallife.Thus, to the eye of Faith the common lifeof humanity, not any abnormal or unusualexperience, is material of God's redeemingaction. As ordinary food and water are thestuff of the Christian sacraments, so it is in theordinary pain and joy, tension and self-oblivion,sin and heroism of normal experience that Hismoulding and transfiguring work is known.The Palestinian glow which irradiates thehomely mysteries of the Gospel, and gives tothem the quality of eternal life, lights up forFaith the slums and suburbs, the bustle, gamesand industries, of the modern world, Thenthe joys, sorrows, choices and renunciations,the poor little efforts and tragedies, of theground-floor life, are seen to be shot through,dignified and transfigured by the heavenlyradiance, the self-oblivious heroism, of theupstairs life. Nor can we exclude from a sharein this transforming glory the mystery andpathos of that animal creation from which our78

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULnatural lives emerge. Faith shows us each tinycreature ringed round by the celestial light.A deep reverence for our common existence,with its struggles and faultiness, yet itssolemn implications, comes over us when werealize all this; gratitude for the ceaselesstensions and opportunities through which Godcomes to us and we can draw a little nearer toHim a divine economy in which the simplestand weakest are given their part and lot in theholy redemptive sacrifice of humanity, andincorporated in the Mystical Body whichincarnates Eternal Life.So in this upper room, this "spire-top of thesoul" as the mystics call it, we are offered a lifeof prayer so full and rich that in it we can turnto and even combine both the great aspectsof God's self-disclosure to man. If our prayeris to be adequate to our vision, there must be aplace in it for the Transcendent Mystery andthe Incarnate Life ;for adoration and sacrament,awe and active love. But we have not finishedyet with all that the upper room has to give us.There are days when we are not drawn toeither window; when it is dark outside, thestars are hidden, and the landscape loses allcolour and significance. What is then left forFaith? Perhaps the best thing of all: as thebest hours of human life are often those whenthe home is closed from the outside world, thecurtains are drawn and the lamp lit.When the curtains of Faith are drawn, we79

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULfind that we are not alone in the upper room.A companionis there with us, and has alwaysbeen with us ;whom we hardly noticed almosttook for granted when we were gazing at themarvellous view. Now in the dimness we drawnear one another. As the mystics say, it is inthe Night of Faith that the soul draws nearestto God ;and discovers the indwelling Powerwhose presence does not depend on vision andfeeling, but only on faithfulness. This is the"wondrous familiarity of the blessed Presenceof God" of which they often speak. Here, asGrou teaches, is that place of prayer which cannever fail us ;the place where our bare, nakedbeing has contact in its ground with the Beingof God "created intelligence with IncreateIntelligence, without intervention of imaginationor reason, or anything else but a verysimple attention of the mind and an equallysimple application of the will." Here, wherethe mysterious Source of all beauty, truth andlove enters and obscurely touches our spirit,the most secret and intimate experiences ofreligion take place. Happy in her bareness andpoverty, the soul sits like the beggar maid atCophetua'sfeet. She has no desire to look outof the window then. She is absorbed in thatgeneral loving attention which is the essenceof contemplative prayer; an attention sometimesfull of peace and joy, at others withoutlight or emotional gladness, but always controlledby a gratitude, adoration, humble80

THE HOUSE OF THE SOULaffection, which exclude allthought even ofthe needs of self. Such prayer, said one of themystics, "brings God and the soul into a littleroom, where they speak much of love."Through Faith, then, the soul, shut in itslittle house, can receive these three disclosuresof God ;and respond byits adoration, adherence,humble collaboration with Him. But notallthree at once; or, as a rule,all three withequal fullness and intensity.A baby mayexperience the mother's breast, or from thecradle gaze up at the mother's face, or clutchfor safety at the mother's dress. All three aredistinct and complementary experiences of thesame mother; and in the dim yet vivid babymind-, the great fact of the mother alreadyexceeds and unites all these separate experiences.So it is with Faith's vivid yet obscureexperience of God the Transcendent :Mystery,the Manifest Life, the Indwelling Guest.Ascending to the "fine point of the spirit" thesoul everywhere finds Him, since there is noplace where He is not and; just because of herdiscovery of all that is given in secret to thedepths within, can dare to stretch out towardsthe heights above. But she must divide herexperience, if she is ever to express even thefragment that can be told of it : and even so theultimate fact "incomprehensible yet comprehendingall" escapes her. For the Divine actionexceeds, while it encloses and penetrates,all thepartial apprehensions81of Faith. "What shall

THE HOUSE OF THE SOULany man say," cries St. Augustine, "when hespeaks of Thee?"What then is this experience, in so far as thelimited mind of man can grasp it? It is anexperience of Trinity in Unity:of EternalFather, Manifest Son and Indwelling Spirit.Yet in this experience the three are known tobe one : the unmeasured Light of the Godheadis truly the Light of our world and the InnerLight of each soul. Perhaps this approximationof theology and prayer will give thetraditional language of religion fresh depth,quality, and meaning for us. "I confess toGod Almighty ,the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,in the sight of the whole Company of Heaven !"How overwhelmingisthe meaning carried bythis familiar phrase, for those who stand inthe watch-tower of Faith. The self-contemptengendered by our own dingy domesticities isunmeasurably deepened and purified, when thesoul thus finds itself over against the livingPerfection of God.Thus Faith, and the prayer of Faith, as itbecomes more realistic, raises penitence to newlevels of contrition and love; and so doing,opens the door wider to God. More than this,itoperates a stern cleansing ^of our wholeunderstanding of existence; taking us backwardsand forwards from the surroundingmystery to the human necessity, from the vastand dimly seen supernaturallife to the divinelysupported natural life which trains us, and in-82

THE HOUSE OF THE SOULward to the soul's own secret life, divinely supportedtoo. Three in one, all controlled andused by God in His transcendent Majesty andfreedom, all subject to a vast purpose which isfar beyond our knowledge, and yet in whichwe share. Queer little scraps of spirit, ridingwith comparative ease on the bosom of Creativity,we think seldom of the mysteriousrealities of our situation ;more seldom of thatspiritual economy, of which our own growingspirits must form part.How then do we stand in respect of our useof the watch-tower of Faith ? Are we so busyon the ground floor that we take it for granted,and seldom go upstairs? It is true that thosestairs are dark and steep ;but if we never makethe effort, never ascend to the soul's summit,we remain somethingless than human. Wemiss our most sacred privilege and source oflife; and our understanding of existence, ourreaction to circumstance, remain petty, earthy,unpurified. Many things that look too hard tobe borne at the foot of the stairs are recognizedin the watch-tower as a privilege arid a joy.So the first movement of prayer should alwaysbe an ascent of that staircase, a lifting up of theheart from basement levels; and the nextshould be an opening of the window. The airthat comes in may be sharp, but it is healthyand bracing. The stuffiness and clatter of thekitchen, all Martha's worried self-importantfuss, fall away from us when we breathe that83

air,THE H O U SE OF THE SOULlook out on that landscape. We are standingat the apex of our spirit ;and the childishabsurdity of our normal troubles and preoccupationsis made plain to us. Our understanding,usually pinned down to the here-andnow,and beset by the ceaseless succession ofdemands and events, is being steadied andpurified by contact with the Unchanging. Weare lifted above the level of sense to widehorizons; and see that sense-life in new proportion,lit by a new compassion and love.Faith simplifies our sight and pacifies ourminds, by subordinating all things to theReality of God.Certainly it may take years for our faiththus to become truly realistic. At first, we donot understand that it is not realistic. Likebeginners in physical science, we live happilyamong its symbols unconscious of the hidden;universe with which these symbols deal. Onlyas we emerge into realism do we see whatof which weregions of broadening experience,did not even suspect the existence, still intervenebetween us and that which St. John ofthe Cross calls the "divine abyss of faith.""God," says De Caussade, "is the Centre ofFaith; and all His words and works are likethe dark rays of a sun which todarker still."Onlyour sight isthose who live much in thewatch-tower can grasp the reality within suchwords as these.Those who do will realize how grotesqueis

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULany alliance between spiritual self-occupationand faith: how absurd is the situation of thesmall creature gazing from itswindow at themajestic spectacle of the Universe, or watchingthe searching drama of the Cross, or shut in thedimness with that presence whose love andlowliness so unmeasurably exceed its ownwhose only thoughtis: How can this help me?We have to drop all that sort of killthing, thereflex action of our egoistic minds, achieve alittle loving self-oblivion, before we can lookwith purity of sight upon the Real. Faithrequires of the soul an adoration of God, adherenceto God, collaboration with God, pursuedeven to forgetfulness of self. We climb thestairs obsessed by our own difficulties, prejudicesand worries, weighing the pros and consof our little affairs ; secretly hoping that someholy ointment may soothe the wounds to selfimportance,or repair a complexion roughenedby the friction of the world. And then we areastonished because we find ourselves "distracted,"and our eyes are not in focus for theview. But if we desire to enter into our supernaturalinheritance, the deep tranquillity ofFaith, coming unto God we must be completelyabsorbed in the fact that He is ;and rewards insuch ways as we can endure them and themonly that diligently seek Him for His ownsake alone.

VI'"TpHERE is a story told of an old womanA who went into a shop and asked for aquarter of a pound of 2/- tea. The grocer askedher what sort of tea she expected to get. Shereplied that she hoped for the best, but wasprepared for the worst. This, of course, wasnot the virtue of Hope.Hope, the second of those spiritual powers inman which tend towards God, is a completelyconfident expectation;that sureness and certitudewith which the awakened soul aims atGod and rests in God. It is the source of thatliving peace, that zestand alertness, that powerof carrying on, which give its special colour tothe genuine Christian life. Hope brings theexalted vision of Faith into the wear and tearof our daily life.watch-tower, where we feelWhen we descend from thethat we can doall things or rather that in us all things canbe done and try to do the things, the firstresult is usually disillusion. Unless Hope hascome downstairs with us to sweeten fortitude,the lastpermeate the content of our minds,resultmay be apathy and despair.The old moralists said that Hope was thevirtue which purified the Memory and mademeant allit fit for God ; and by Memory they86

THE HOUSEOF THE SOULour funded experience, that hoarded pasttfhich we drag along with us, and which conditionsour whole outlook on life. In respect ofall this, Hope teaches us the art of wise forgetting;of dropping the superfluous, the out-the trivial. It cleanses the mind fromgrown,all those half-realities which impede the totalandconcentration of our love and will on God ;lifts upall the rest of our experience into theeternal light, saying, "Even thoughI do notsee the meaning, yet I know all this is conditioningmy growth, purifying my spirit,taking me towards You; and nothing mattersbjitthat."Hope finds all life penetrated by a significancethat points beyond itself, and has atrustful expectation that the ceaseless streamrf events, thoughts, joys, trials the wholestuff of experience means something, contributesto something; and only has valuebecause it points beyond itself to God, is anearnest of rich fields of experience awaiting theside of self-soul. Such Hope is the brightibandonment. Much so-called self-abandonmentis conceived in the spirit of the 2/- tea ;but that real self-abandonment to God whichis the supreme expression of our human freedomshould be a delighted act of Hope. "0.God, my hope is in Thee," does not mean "Ihave tried everything else first." It means thatthe final achievement of His hidden purposeiswhat we really care about, and that we entirely

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULdepend on Him for the power of achieving our|little bit of His plan.Thus the pain and disappointment, the!tragedy and frustration of existence, are transfiguredwhen Hope purifies the mind. If Faithenlarges and illuminates the understanding,shows it the fields of experience that liebeyond its span, Hope integrates Faith's visionwith the very texture of our common thoughts,our mental life as a whole ; merging the interestsof that little life in the vast interests of the]Divine love and will. "When I am in trouble,I will think upon God," said the Psalmist;!think about that mysterious and living loveand here andpressing in on human history,there working through in the shimmer ofholiness, the sharp glintof sacrifice. I willforget my personal discomfort, my unsteadiness |and anxieties, and anchor myself there. It istrue that my little boat rolls heavily on thesurface of the waves, and often makes me feelvery ill; but under those waves is the firmground of Reality, the Life of God. This sensethat beyond all appearance we depend utterlyon the Goodness of God, and can depend on itthis isHope. "Thy goodness," says Thomasa Kempis, "never ceases to do well by me."Such Hope gives the spiritual life its stayingpower. It is the necessary condition of keepingthings going and getting things done. Thestruggles to which the ground floor of humannature commits us will never be maintained,

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULunless that living, spirit presides upstairs. Asife goes on, nothing but Hope, its supernaturalzest and adventurous temper, will preserve usrom the insidious tendency to settle down intomaking religious pot-boilers; reproducing ourold designs, instead of moving on to the thingsthat are before. It is the very soul of the life of>rayer whether that;prayer be poured out forhe world's betterment, for the many shortcomingsof our own premises and performances,or directed beyond all thought of selfand world to God its Home: for it is theproperty of Hope, says St. Thomas, "to makeus tend to God, both as a good to be finallyattained, and as a helper strong to assist."Thus Hope is supremely the virtue of theincomplete; of the creature stretching out inbve and prayer to the complete Reality ofGod, the final object of Hope. In this double,trustful tendency to Him, as at once ourCompanion and our Goal, Faith achieves itsperfect work. God whose vast purposes maybe veiled from us, but whose personal, moulding,cherishing action, whose urgent anddemanding Spirit,is felt at work within ourlittle homes. Such Hope inspires and upholdsthe prudence, temperance and fortitude requiredof us in our dealings with life and withthe peculiarities of our own basement. Even itstiany falls are like the falls of eager children.They are dreadful at the moment, and oftenmake us bruised and muddy. But we pick

THE HOUSE OF THE SOULourselves up and go on ; forgetting that whichisbehind, reaching forward to that which isbefore, because there issomething more atstake than "Safetyfirst."Even on the psychological level we allexperience the creative power of Hope. Ourminds are so made that convinced assurance,trustful expectation, always tends to realizeitself. It concentrates energy on the matterin hand, creates a favourable psychic atmosphere,encouragesthe will to flow undividedalong the path leading to fulfilment, and setsgoing the appropriate mechanisms. Hencethose who ask with confidence are likely toreceive, and those who seek to find. Whetherin that corporatelife of souls which we callhistory in the ; personal work of costly transformationto which each separate soul is committed;or in that secret and most sacred flightto God, in which the human spirit achieves itsgoal, Hope is the living spirit of transcendence,the pathfinder of life.In history we see Hope as the spiritualpreparation of the future and a; preparationwhich is left entirely in our hands. It is the wayin which the corporate soul of man stretchesout to lay hold upon the gifts of God. Did welook with more loving attention at God's workin history, it would help us to discern His secretworkings in the soul. History, even that whichwe call secular history, always shows us Hopegoing before, to make plain the path along90

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULwhich the creative purpose shall move. It isthe growing point of life. Social justice, education,child welfare, women's freedom all thesewere hoped for long before they were achieved.And now, looking towards the future, it is thesolemn duty of every awakened spirit to enlarge,deepen and enrich this hope for mankind.Every movement of pessimism is a betrayalof the, purposes of God a; short-circuiting ofthat flows from Himthe spiritual energysouls. The web of life is in-through livingfinitely sensitive to the morbid activity of eachof its cells. There can hardly be a more lethalweapon than the mind of a nation filled withthe thought that war must come, or thatsociety is running down hill and some;responsibilityfor this corporate mind rests upon everycitizen.Thought is a greatgiven to us by God ;and sacred forceour share in the life thatlies behind appearance. It is a creative forcewhen filled with Hope a destructive force when;it concentrates on the ground floor and its oftendeplorable state, and calls this "facing reality."Hence the building up of a public opinion fullof Hope, because it tends with confidence toGod and the things of God, is a spiritual dutylaidupon all Christians; who are bound tobelieve in the continuous incarnation of HisSpirit in human life, and to make plain thepaths along which that Spirit can move. Wedo nothing for the Kingdom by going into thegarden to eat political or ecclesiastical worms.9*

THE- HOUSE OFTHESOULThe whole of Christian history really turnsupon the power of human hope this absolute:hold upon the reality of God, His supernaturalenergy and freedom, with the correspondingconviction that He does and will act within thehuman arena, intervene to save. "I am not aGod afar off: I am thy Maker and friend" aMaker who has not finished His work, but ismaking us all the time, whose capacity forloving action is inexhaustible. The psychologicallandscape in which the greatest eventin man's spiritual history was prepared wascoloured by Expectation, Hope. Christ wasborn among those who waited for the consolationof Israel; who were sure, in spite ofbaffling appearance, that the purpose of Godwould be fulfilled. The Blessed Virgin, standingat the budding-point of Christian history,meets her strange destiny with selfless confidence.The same necessary condition runsthrough the Gospels. Those are healed thatcome hopefully; their confident expectationis always approved. We are to expect thatGod will give us good gifts, answer our prayers,provide for our necessities. This note recursperpetually in all our Lord's teaching.If weask we get,if we seek we find, if we knockhopefully on the door it will open. The unlimitedworld of eternal life is here on thethreshold with its riches ;it is for us to stretchout to it with confidence. If we are not morespiritually effective,it is because of our low92

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULlevel of desire, our lack of initiative, of courageousexpectation. The Spirit of God worksin and with the faithful, hopeful will thatexpects, and waits upon, the supernaturalresponse. The lessons of psychology are liftedup, and shown to us as shadows cast by thelaws of the spiritual world.In His own prayer, our Lord rejoices becauseallhappens and must happen accordingto the mind of God ;even though that fulfilmentis reached by paths which cut across ourhuman notions of success. In the events of HolyWeek He teaches by demonstration the lessonof an unconquerable Hope; the anchoring ofthe soul's trust, beyond all appearance, in theinfinite 'Life of God. From the poor littletriumph of Palm Sunday, through the gatheringcloud of foreboding, to the stress and agony ofGethsemane and Calvary with an ever increasingsense of isolation, forsakenness anddarkness, culminating in the utter helplessnessand ignominy of the Cross the soul of Christmoves with a steadiness transcending humanagony: sure that in spite of appearances theWill of God is holy, and that along these darkpaths, by utmost sacrifice and apparent failure,the purposes of His Love must prevail. Thatsupernatural Hope transfigured even the awfulmoment of dereliction, when He felt himself tobe abandoned by God, and tasted the horrorsof spiritual death. It was through this darknessthat He rose to the heights of self-abandonedG 93

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULtrust. "Father, into Thy hands I commend myspirit" the evening prayer of every Jewishchild "I do not ask, know, or guess, what isgoing to happen; Thou art my Hope!""Christ," said the poet Peguy, "was the Manof Hope." He showed it in a heavenly splendouronly possible to those whose lives are lostin God. Here we leave human fortitude andcourage, the mere Stoic power of sticking itout, far behind; are caught in the mightycurrent which sets from the natural to thesupernatural life, and learn that the veryanguish of the soul on these frontiers of experienceis an earnest that the expectation ofthe creature will be fulfilled. Devout personsspeak much of the Easter Hope; but it issurely the Good Friday Hope, with its lessonof self-oblivious confidence in life's blackestmoments, that speaks most clearly to the needsof men. It is then that the Church, with trueinstinct, exclaims, "Agios ischyros! Agios athanatos!"By that contemplation we are liftedfrom all petty preoccupation with our ownreasons for despondency, taught to look onwide horizons, depersonalize our prayer confidentthat in suffering and apparent failure;wecontribute tothe mysterious purposes of theGod we love.We come down from this tremendous revelation,to look at something a little nearer to ouraverage level, and consider the work of Hope inthe cleansing and re-ordering of our own soul's94

THE HOUSE. OFTHE SOULlife. We remember how Dante places at thebeginning of the Purgatorio a wonderful pictureof the ship of souls, driven towards the purifyingmountain by the great wings of the Angelof Hope. There they are, with all their humanimperfections, stains and limitations and with;their faces set towards the infinite possibilities,the unspeakable perfections of God. Theyknow that much suffering and difficult purificationmust be the path along which they willreach Him ;but hope of God, thirst for God,overrules all fear of pain.As the ship comesto shore, they flingthemselves on the landcrying "Who will show us the waymount?" There isto thecleansing no reluctance toface the penalty of conduct, the working ofthat law of consequence which burns out thevery root of man's self-love. They look beyondall that to God, the soul's Patria, towardswhich they. tend in hope.We know, in our lucid moments, that we tooare committed to such a painful re-ordering ofour love; some cleansing discipline must setour muddled lives in order, deal with the stainsand excesses we have accumulated during ourtenancy, if the creature is to be made fit forGod its Home. When the radiance of the Holyshines on our defenceless souls, we shall knowourselves for what we are. "Then said I, Woeis me !. . . for mine eyes have seen the King,the Lord of Hosts." Then the measure of ourFaith, Hope and Charity will be the gladness95

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULwith which we welcome the humiliations whichmust break our foolish pride, the lessons ofpatience that must curb our childish anger, thedeprivations that will turn our possessiveinstincts from unreal to real objectives. Butif this be so, how artificial, how, deficient inrealistic Hope, is that notion of God's actionon and in our spirits,which refers to an unknownfuture the opportunity of purgation.The cleansing touch is already completelypresent in all the ups and downs, the trials,sacrifices, humiliations of our personal andprofessional life; in all those inequalities ofhealth, affection, opportunity, which mortifyself-will and self-esteem. It is the business ofHope, tending here and now to God, to recognizewithin these baffling accidents the operationsof Creative Love, and its own duty ofcollaboration ; looking fairly and squarely at allthat needs to be done to fit the soul for itsdestiny, and then starting the work in perfectconfidence that the energy of God is with usfrom the moment that we really take thescrubbing-brush into our hands.The house of the soul is properly furnished ;the cleaning materials are all there. Thelanguors and difficulties of ill-health, thefriction of uncongenial temperaments, the hardrubs of circumstance, can all leave us cleanerthan before. As there is nothing more destructiveof serenity than unwilling endurance of aspring-clean; so there is nothing more exhilar-96

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULating than the same process when we do someof the work ourselves. If our own hands carrythe cherished bundle of rubbish to the dustbin,if we acquiesce in the fact that the far toocomfortable sofa does crowd up our room toomuch, and has got to go;if we put zest andhope into the struggle to efface those blackmarks from walls that were meant to be whitethen even the most painful effort is transformedby the knowledge that we are workingto make our house what it is meant to be andcan be : a habitation fit for the Spirit now. Weare creatures for whom the Beauty of Holinessis a possibility in so far as we;place our confidencein the perpetual operations of that Spiritwhich "has marvellously made our humannature, and still more, marvellously remakes it"and accept with love and courage the methodby which the work is done centring our senseof reality there, and letting all the rest dropaway.For the true basis of the soul's hope of Godis God's hope for the soul. His confident intention;precedes and inspires ours, and gives allits significance to our life. God's hope for soulsoften seems to us to be thwarted ;but itbeginsagain in its power and freshness with everybaby born into the world. Each represents ahope of God; a possibility of holiness, fullnessof life. He has made us for Himself; but thefulfilment of that hope is partly in our ownhands. It requires our generous and courageous97

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULresponse to the secret Divine incentive, ourpeaceful acceptance of purification, our activecharity; the full and dedicated use of all theresources of the upper floor. Our own reluctance,cowardice, want of hope, keep us back."The weakest of sinners," said Peguy, "caneither frustrate or crown a hope of God." Whenwe think of this aspect of our freedom, of ourever-growing, mobile, never finished livesthat there is one fragment of the Eternal purposewhich no one else can fulfil, one place inthe world where we and none other are meantto transmit God's life and love, and so fulfilHis Hope then even in our timid souls thereis born a faint desire to give ourselves withoutreserve to His purpose, whatever the cost.There is work which God requires to bedone by each one of us, and which no one elsecan do. Therefore our business is to get downto it, checking the instinctive recoil to theinferiority complex, the easy resort to "I'mnot up to it : there must be some mistake" ;insure and certain hope that if we get the job weshall get the authority it requires. "He gavepower and authority to the twelve," says theGospel; not merely to the most spiritual andenlightened. It does not appear that themajority were very spiritual or very enlightened;but they were free from the introspectiveweakness which perpetually strokes its ownimperfections, and makes of them a reason forits deprecating reluctance to serve. The Twelve

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULmust have felt very odd when theyout alone to teach and heal; but they wentwith Hope, and they came back with Joy. Andtwere sentthe same thing has ever been true of the Saints,and of countless souls far below the level of theSaints, who have accepted in the spirit of Hopean infinite variety of jobs. "I said to God thatit was His business I was about, and after thatI found itvery well performed," said BrotherLawrence, when called from contemplation tobuy wine for his convent a business for whichhe knew that he had no capacity.Hope of that quality is the source of the gaycourage with which the real lover of God facesthe apparently impossible or the unknown:and we observe that it is not merely an easyand comfortable optimism. It means actingupon our assurance, taking risks for it ; enteringupon a path of which we do not see the end. Itmeans "Go forward"; not "Wait and see," or"Safety first." Forgetting the things which arebehind, this hope reaches forth with confidenceunto the things which are before ; stripping offall that impedes it, refusing to be clogged byold fears and prejudices, moribund ideas. Itbelieves in the God of the future, as well as theGod of the past. It knows how to combine aliving suppleness and freedom with an utterself-abandonment, a humble self-knowledgewith a vigorous initiative. "What is my hope?even Thou, O God !Though I lost my temperyesterday,youcan use me to help a soul to-day."99

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOUL"The self-satisfaction of the finite," saysBernard Bosanquet, "is the portal where Hopevanishes." But once the great principle ofdoing nothing in our own strength is grasped,we shall find with surprise that our performanceis not much affected by our own dreadfulmediocrity. Something else, a stronger, richer,steadier life, supports, controls and actsthrough us. The guest for whom We have maderoom isrunning the house. Hope means beingprepared for this, and trusting it, when we aredefinitely given a job, placed in a situation,which we feel to be beyond our powers; andwhich, for that very reason, contributes to thesoul's growth by throwing it back upon God.So Hope must preside over the soul'scleansing and re-ordering of its premises, andthe work it has to do. But our supernaturalHope has a dignity and a sanction far beyondthese here-and-now objectives ;and asks of thecreature a courage and sacrifice commensuratewith its transcendental goal. We find its trueimage in that natural order, where the Saintshave so often followed their model in lookingfor the supernatural lessons of God: in theautumn migrants, starting on their immensejourney along the invisible pathwaysof theair, towards a summer home which they cannotan irresistiblesee, yet which draws them bypower. Migration is not an easy or a pleasantbird to face. It must turnthing for a tinydeliberately from solid land, from food,100

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULshelter, a certain measure of security, and flyacross an ocean unfriendly to its life, destituteof everything it needs. We make much of theheroism and endurance of our airmen andexplorers. Perhaps some day man will rivalthe adventurous hope of the willow wren andthe chiff-chaff; an ounce and a half of livingcourage, launching out with amazing confidenceto a prospect of storms, hardship,exhaustion perhaps starvation and death.Careful minds would hardly think the riskwas worth taking. But the tiny bird, beforeconditions force it not driven by fear, butdrawn by Hope commits itself with perfectconfidence to that infinite ocean of air; whereall familiar landmarks will vanish, and if itsstrength fails it must be lost. And the bird'shope is justified. There is summer at theother end of the perilous journey. The scrapof valiant lifeobeys a true instinct whenit launches itself on the air. It isurged fromwithin towards a goalit can attain; andmay reckon the suffering of the moment notworthy to be compared to the glory that shallbe revealed.Our Lord found great significance in thelife of birds; in their freedom, their selfabandonedtrust, their release from mere carefulness.He held them precious to God, andpatterns for the faith and hope of man. I sometimesthink that the divine of gift Hope thatconfident tendency of the soul, that trust in101

THE HOUSE OF THE SOULthe invisible, and in a real goal, a Country,truly awaiting uspoured into man by God togive meaning and buoyancy to his life :was first, as it were, tried out in the birds. Longall thisages before we appeared, the clouds of tinymigrants swept over the face of this planet.Incarnate scraps of hope, courage, determination,they were ready at a given moment toleave all and follow the inward voice ; obeyingthe instinct that called them in the teeth ofperil and difficulty, giving themselves trustfullyto the supportingair.Nor does this exhaust their likeness to thesoul. If we ask why the bird is so utterly athome what is the cause of this confidence,this buoyancy, this easy, steady flight sciencereplies that it is itself partly a creature of air.Its very bones are so made that the air penetratesand informs them. It is lifted fromwithin, as well as supported from without; theinvisible Kingdom to which it gives itself isof its own life. Even so areinseparably a partwe both penetrated and supported by an oceanof Love and Life, an infinite yet indwellingReality experienced though unseen: "God inHimself as He iseverywhere and at all times,"as St. Thomas has it. "And now what ismyhope? surely my hopeis in Thee" as thebird in the air, so we in the Being of God. Asthe bird, we are called to another country,aPatria. The courage which can face long effort,vast and lonely distances, apparent emptiness,102

THE HOUSE OF THE SOULmay be the testing condition of our flight. Yetthe loneliness and emptiness are only apparent :for in Him we live and move and have ourbeing, even while to Him we tend. He inspiresand supports the adventure of which He is thegoal. For Hope is Love, tendingto God atall costs; bearing all things, believing allthings, enduring all things, because sure thatHe has made us for Himself, and our heartsshall find their rest in Him alone.103

VIIWE have inspected both floors of the soul'shouse; stood in its watch-tower, andstudied its domestic arrangements the disadvantagesand possibilities of the doublesituation in which we are placed. Yet therestill seems something lacking; somethingwhich must fill the whole house from basementto attic and bind in one both levels of life, ifitsupkeep is to be worth while, if it is to beanything more than a model dwelling withoutthe atmosphere of a home. What is it that iswanting ? Charity the; living Spirit of CreativeLove. To be a home, a dwelling-place in timefor that Spirit, the house has been swept andgarnished, the best loved bits of rubbish havebeen sacrificed, the windows have been cleaned,the table set. It is not intended to be a showplace,but a real "habitation of God throughthe Spirit"; and the name of the Spirit isCharity. If Faith opened the eyes of the understandingon that threefold vision in which wesee that only God is fully real and if; Hope sopurified the mind's content that alldroppedaway but its trustful tendency to that unchangingReality then Charity transforms in God the;very mainspring of character, the active will,and thus completes the spiritualization of man.104

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULSo Charity, when it enters the soul's house,swallows up and irradiates its Faith and Hope."God is Charity," says St. John, "who dwellsin Charity dwells in God" a saying whichmight deliver us from much anthropomorphicpietism, did we realize its depth and sweep. Itmeans that the Spirit of Creative Love is thevery character of the Infinite God. There isno difference between saying God "comes" tothe soul in Himself, or "sends" -His love; forin that love we receive, in a way that we canbear, the impact of the ever-present Divinelifeupon the creature it has made. When wedepart from that love we depart from Reality;leave the vivid world of spiritual fact, andenter the museum-like atmosphere of theology,full of stuffed birds that once were living bitsof Faith and Hope. For the Charity of Godis,as it were, the air that bathes the city, thesun that lights it, the heat that warms it; and,as experienced in each little house, by eachof allseparate soul, there is in it somethingthese. If a spark from that fire burns on thehearth of personality, the soul has become tothat extent a partaker of the Divine nature. Sheshares in the verylife of the Saints; receivesand distributes something of that radiantwarmth which fills the whole spiritual universe,the "Love that makes all things fair." "Wehave," says St. Teresa, "the Sun in our house" :that Sun which is not the soul's self, but is thesoul's life, Like central heating, its influence is105

feltTHE HOUSE OF THE SOULeverywhere, upstairs and downstairs too;distributing an equable fosteringwarmth toevery corner, conditioning our growth intofulness of personality.Charity, then, means something which farexceeds altruism. It is the human spirit's shareof the Divine life: there is, indeed, no otherin which it can share that life. "Whowaydwells in charity dwells in God";is unitedto God ; partakes of the creative point of view.We are looking with awe at the approachmade by the human soul to the burning heartof Reality an approach only made possibleby the prevenient action of God and, turningto our own narrow hearts, our feverish andclaimful desires, unreal objectives, and fluctuatinglove, we ask: Can these things be? Inour own strength, of course, they could not be;but they can be, because the initiative lies withthe Divine life. As theology says: "We loveHim because He first loved us." Before thestellar universe, before the first mysteriousbeginnings of creation, the fire of Charity wasalready lighted. Creation is an act of love;love, as Julian of Norwich was taught in hervision, is its "meaning" however much thatmeaning has been overlaid and distorted bythe sins and confusions of life. No religioussystem is worth accepting or imparting thatis not in harmony with this mysterioustruth: for life, the "more abundant life" ofthe Eternal World which is offered by God106

THE HOUSE OFto men, can onlyTHE SOULbe measured in terms oflove."O luce eterna plena d'amore!" cries Dante,caught for one dazzlingmoment to a vision ofthe Real. Unless our tendency to God bringsus ever nearer the point at which we see theworld and all things in it in this generous transfiguringlight, it is not a reality; nor is anyspiritual experience valid, which fails to introduceus into that Ocean of Creative Love."How could those books have taught meCharity?" said St. Augustine, as he turnedfrom the alluring mysticism of the Neoplatonists,with its tremendous appeal to his speculativeintellect, and capitulated to the Cross.That was the final question for him; and stillmust be so, for allgenuine seekers afterReality. It marks the boundary betweenphilosophy and religion, between the objectivesof the visionary and the saint. "Without theexercise of love," says Ruysbroeck, "we cannever possess God; and whosoever thinks orfeels otherwise is deceived."Charity is no easyemotion. It does notmerely consist in yielding to the unspeakableattraction of God. We are often terrified andalways shamed when we see what its achievementinvolved for the Saints; what steadyendurance of darkness, what suffering andcourage, are the price of their love, joy andpeace. The fire of Charity,lit in the soul,needs careful tending. The first tiny flame107

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULmust not be allowed to die down for lack offuel ;and we may have to feed it with things weshould prefer to keep for ourselves. It willonly be developed and kept burning in a lifeinformed by prayer faithful, steady, mortified,self-oblivious prayer, the humble, aspiration ofthe spiritto its Source: indeed, the very objectof prayeris to increase and maintain Charity,the loving friendship of the soul with God.All other aspects of the inner lifeare subsidiaryto this: and onlyof value in so far asthey contribute to it. For the prayer of Charityintroduces us into the very atmosphere andpresence of God, that secret chamber of thesoul where He dwells ;and shows us, obscurelybut intensely, God as the one object of thissoul's love and longing, and all struggles andsacrifices made in His interests as forms ofjoy. It lifts the heavy cloud of self-occupationfrom our spirits, transforms the mental andmoral problems that torture us; they all lookdifferent in the light of that fire. "Love," saysThomas a Kempis, "sees causes of fear andfeareth not; but as a quick brand or sparkleof fire flameth ever upward." And it is thisconstant desirous aspiration of the soul towardsthe Beloved Perfection, with itsutter forgetfulnessof personal dreads and risks, whichdelivers it from evil. "Adam sinned when hefell from contemplation" and the essence ofcontemplation is the soul's loving attention toGod. "Were we always simple," says Ruys-108

THE HOUSE OF THE SOULbroeck, "and could we always contemplatewith the same recollection, we should alwayshave that same experience, which is our properresting-place,"Within the prayer of Charity, too, we catcha glimpse of our own small life in the light ofGod, and of our own soul's house as it is meantto be a habitation of the Creative Love. It isa bracing and a humbling vision. We see ourvocation then, however prosaic, as a form ofCharity; simply a call to express the creativelove infused into us, in this or that way. ForCharity introduces the soul into a vast organism,built of all striving, loving spirits; anorganism which is destined to be possessed andused by God, for creative and redemptive workwithin the world.Hence the only active works worth doing orworth having are ultimately found to be thosethat proceed from Charity that are the work:of a soul adhering to God and acting as Histool. This gives them what painters call"quality." We know how the Dutch artistscould give quality to a heap of vegetables, or achild's toy. If th$ quality of charity isin ourwork, that work, however modest, will suffice.If not, all itsapparent devotedness, efficiencyand success will merely give out the correct butunmusical noise of the gong, or the tinkle of thebright and busy cymbal. Works of mercy doneby the Saints come out, as it were almost ofthemselves, from a soul so utterly merged in theH 109

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULlove of God that He acts through Thus it. theyhave an effect quite out of proportion to theirapparent scope. A real act of Charityis theexact opposite of an act of philanthropy. It isdone wholly to, for and in God; for His sake,as a contribution to His purpose, because wesee the situation from His point of view. It isborn of the First, not the Second Commandment:of supernatural, not of natural, love. Sotoo all religious acts and sacrifices more, allsacred objects, symbols and devotions, even tothe loftiest degrees of mental prayer are onlyof spiritual worth if soaked in Charity and usedwith Charity: with a loving tendency of thenaked will through them to God. "Unless,"to Godsays Maritain, "we direct very purelyalone our desire of contemplation itself and itsjoys, which St. Bernard called 'the paradise ofinterior delights,' we shall not truly advancein the way of the Spirit.".All the exercises of the devotional life fallunder this law. The use of the Crucifix,meditation on Christ's Life and Passion, arefound to be of value to the soul because theyconvey love and evoke love; and so feed thefire at the heart of personality. The disciplinesand renunciations which give order and beautyto the soul's house are only fruitful whenundertaken for the sake of Charity. The houseis meant to radiate that; our business is to takeaway everything which interferes. This is theprinciple which givesnoall valid asceticism its

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULmeaning and worth. So the spirit of poverty,deliberately loosening its clutch on possessions ;the spirit of chastity, calling in all vagrant,immoderate and distracting desires; the spiritof obedience, subduingits will to the overrulingDivine Will, give health, strength andorder to the love that is intended to find itsgoal in God: but only impoverish or sterilizethe soul that is seeking for self-fulfilment bythese paths. "Charity," says Augustine Baker,"lives and grows according to the measure thatself-love is abated, and no further." We havereached the "short point'* as the lawyers say;the one thing needful, the all-sufficing rule bywhich the house is to be run. And we find it tobe identical with the law of the city: "Love ofGod even to contempt of self."Thus in the last resort Christian perfection,in fact the whole course of the spiritual life, isfound to be the same thing as Charity theloving union of the human spiritwith theEternal Spirit of God. Nothing but this lovewill drive it to the heroic struggles, selfstrippingand purifications, maintain it throughthe long slow climb with many humbling falls,whereby it is remade in the image of theAbsolute Love. The soul that plays for safety,even spiritual safety, never becomes perfect."Real Charity," says St. John of the Cross, "isnot shown merely by tender feelings, but by astrength, courage and endurance unknown toother souls." The true lover, wholly given toin

THE HOUSE OF THE SOULGod and His interests, is released from allcarefulness about his own interests, safety andcomfort. Thus not Faith and Hope alone, butPrudence, Temperance and Fortitude too, arefound in the last resort to be swallowed up inCharity.This, then, is the first point of Charity; thatpure thirst for God and complete self-givingto God that return movement of the soul toits origin which makes man a spiritual creature,and isthe very substance of his eternallife. We go on to the second point. St. Thomassays, "Charity includes not only love of God,but also a certain friendship with Him. It is alove if a man devotes himself tosign of greaterothers for his Friend's sake, than if he be willingonly to serve his Friend." That opens upanother aspect of the life of Charity, and linksthe First with the Second Commandmentlove of God Pure, and love of His creation forHis sake. Adoring love alone is not enough.Charity requires us, beyond this, to place ourneighbours' rights and needs on an equalitywith our own ;because the generous love of Godispoured out upon the whole world, and ourlove too must be perfect, complete, as that ofour Father and Origin is perfect, complete.The Cross is the supreme symbol of thatdouble movement of Charity ;the pouring forthof self-oblivious love, up towards God, outwardstowards men, and surely downwards too,to all the smaller children of God. Here we are112

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULconfronted by a Charity as rich, wide and deepas Creation, entirely self-giving and entirelyits fellowsundemanding, which loves God first,next, itself not at all; the consummation of alife in which prayer and work, teaching andhealing, joy and suffering, were simply thedifferent strings of an instrument on which wasplayed the only music of the Love of God.And in those Saints who approach their modelmost nearly, as did St. Francis, this widespreadinglove is the very substance of perfection,and ultimate source of their life-givingpower. They are complete in their self-giving,like God. "Because," says Ruysbroeck, "theliving fountain of the Holy Spirit, which is theirwealth, can never be spent," they are becomedistributors of His creative and redeemingenergy. Their passionate identification withHis interests flows out in an endless variety ofexpression to share His love and care for othermen: and it is this, more than any moralcorrectness, any exemption from special faultsor failings,which is the earnest of their supernaturallife. .So the soul's secret holy love for the One, itsadoring contemplation, will flow out if it begenuine on waves of generous compassion tothe Many and ; especially to those whom anexact standard of merit might find unworthy ofpity and care. "To love the unlovely intolovableness" has been called the perfect workof Charity; for here we apply the DivineIJ 3

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULmethod to those bits of His creation that mostneed it : share His redeeming work.Faith may release the mind from the tyrannyof the here-and-now, and Hope may seem toconcentrate the whole drive of our being uponthe Reality of God. Only Charity can thusweave together both worlds, both levels of thesoul's life ; and, making our love of God and ofHis creatures one, provides a habitation, agathering point for the Creative Love, andopens a channel through which it can be appliedto each detail of His unfinished world. Thus itis, as the mystics say, that Charity makes Godand the soul "one thing." Some of the difficultiessurrounding the life of prayer, and particularlyof intercession, might vanish, did weunderstand it as an application to particularcases of the boundless Charity of God; anapplication which is effected by means of ourwill and love.Science sees the universe in natural regard,as a cosmic cloud of infinitely tenuous matterfilling all space; and the stars as special condensationsof that universal substance, able toradiate with peculiar intensity the energy weknow as light an energy which is equallypresent throughout space, though there unseen.An apt parable of that supernatural universein which we live and have our being; trulycontinuous too, and delicately luminous withthe Love of God. Within it we may think ofeach separate soul as a special condensation of114

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULspiritual life; able to receive and give againthat energetic Charity which ispoured out onall creation from the Heart of God. For eachsoul the final question must be: how muchCharity can you receive and transmit? TheSaints glow like living suns. With everyaspiration towards God, the ardour of theircharity increases. Its radiance penetrates toevery corner of creation. It warms and vivifiesthe chillier worlds, which equally depend ontheir share in this generous and life-givinglife : this one mighty movement of the Divinegenerosity, running right through the spiritualworld, and using as its agents the loving andsurrendered souls of men.Beyond time, God loves and gives, in thechangeless perfection of His Charity and the;terms on which His creatures receive is thatthey should give again, heedless of self-interestand personal considerations. Thus all prayers,all sufferings,all deeds from the loftiest to themost homely, given in Charity to the purposesof God, become charged with His energy oflife and avail for the perfecting of the world. Inthis universal sense, Charity puts us in line withall the noblest aspects of Creation the generousoutpouring of sunshine, the uncalculating fertilityof the earth, the great life-giving mantle ofair; all those undemanding giftswhich conditionour existence, and are reflected fragmentsof that unlimited self-giving which is the fundamentalcharacter of God.

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULThe New Testament is full of reminders ofthe transcendent worth, the life-giving quality,of this generous unlimited love : the love thatpours out the precious ointment, and thenbreaks the vase and gives that too ;that throwsin the second mite after the first ;that sets asideas equally irrelevant personal desires, personalfailings,and personal achievements. TheCharity willing to feed the sheep and lambs,and go on and on chopping the turnips andtending the fold, for the sake of the Beloved:adoration and penitence blossoming in homelyservice. Not everyone who says "Lord, Lord!"in accents of devotion enters the supernaturalworld of Charity but; only those self given forlove's sake to the purposes of the Eternal Will.Even when that Will must be carried throughby means of dreary, exacting, and unrewardinglabour; even where it means unlimited sacrificefor apparently unworthy ends completecollaboration with the Divine redemptivework.The House of the Soul, then, must be anopen house for all who are sent to it;whom there are things to be done ;all who arecare. Its welcomeall forproposed to its fosteringmust be as wide as that Poverty which, emptyof itself, has room for all. Upstairs and downstairs,in work and in prayer, it must whollyserve the creative purpose; mortifying thedesire of devotional sweetness, ignoring theclaims of spiritual comfort, and bringingall the116

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULneeds of the city,and of the vast desolate worldbeyond the city, within the area of its widespreadinglove. There must be room for morethan two chairs on the hearthrug. The Loveof God is a large generosity, not a number ofintense individual love affairs; and this is thelove which the living soul is called to pour outon the world. Only when it is wholly made overto His creative, saving and restoring purpose,when all that it does is done in the power ofsupernatural Charity, is the house indeed ahabitation of the Spirit, and doing the work forwhich it was made. This is that union withGod to which the mystics look; a union thatis not consummated in feeling, but in willand work.The Parable of the Talents, into which we soeasily read a utilitarian meaning hardly accordantwith the mind of Christ, seems ratherdesignedto enforce the lesson of the soul'sresponsibility in respect of this mysterious giftof Charity;its share of the riches of God.Those riches are given into its care, that theymay be increased and made fruitful. We arenot to wrap up our bit of love, in case itmightbe lost or damaged; dig a hole in the soul'sgarden and hide itaway. We are to deal withit in the world, with prudence and courage;risk it, putit out. Those who venture theirCharity down in the rough and tumble ofexistence, submit it to the alchemy of thought,work with itboldly, and thus increase the117

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULliving wealth of God these are approved. Thevictims of a miserly, timid and unfruitfulspirituality are utterly condemned. At the endof the story,it is to those who have most thatmore isgiven: for these alone are able toreceive the riches of the Kingdom of God."When the evening of this life comes," saysSt. John of the Cross, "you will be judged onlove." The only question asked about the soul'suse of its two-storied house and the gifts thatwere made to it will be: "Have you lovedwell?" All else will be resumed in this; allthoughts, beliefs, desires, struggles and achievements,all the complex activities of the upperand the lower floor. For Faith isnothingunless it be the obscure vision of a lovedunless it be theReality; and Hope is nothing,confidence of perfect love. So too with all thepersons, events, opportunities, conflicts andchoices proposed for the soul's purification andgrowth. Was everything that was done, donefor love's sake? Were all the doors opened,that the warmth of Charity mightfill the wholehouse; the windows cleaned, that they mightmore and more radiate from within itsmysteriousdivine light? Is the separate life of thehouse more and more merged in the mightycurrent of the city'slife? Is it more and moreadapted to the city's sacred purpose thesaving radiation of the Perfect within animperfect world? For this is Charity; theimmense expansion of personality effected bylio

THE HOUSE OFTHE SOULthe love of God, weaving together the naturaland the supernatural powers of the soul, andfilling them with its abundant life. Overflowingthe barriers of preference, passing throughallitcontrary appearance, mediates the Divinepity and generosity to every mesh and cornerof creation; and rests at last in God, Who isthe life and love of every soul.

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