Men have I seen, and seen with wonderment, Noble in form, "lift upward and divine," In whom I yet must search, as in a mine, After that soul of theirs, by which they went Alive upon the earth. And I have bent Eegard on many a woman, who gave sign God willed her beautiful, when He drew the line That shaped each float and fold of beauty's tent: Her soul, alas, chambered in pigmy space, Left the fair visage pitiful-inane — Poor signal only of a coming face When from the penetrale she filled the fane ! — Possessed of Thee was every form of Thine, Thy very hair replete with the Divine.^
3. The winning of the soul is a continuous process. The religious life is the fulfilment of one's own nature in truest, largest ways. It is the unfolding of one's truest self, under the Fatherhood of God — the God who gives the life, sustains and nourishes it. It is the Divine within us responding to the Divine in God — reaching out and striving to measure itself up in beauty beside His perfect life. It is a spiritual energy welling up from within and realizing itself in all lovely thoughts and deeds, in purity of heart, high aspirings and service of mankind.
This conception of the religious life as developed from within is true to the now known laws of nature. Nothing in nature is superadded, put in from the outside; all is the result of the wonderful processes of fulfilment from within, the first germ of life gradually expressing itself in a million forms and beauties.
* George MacDonald, " Sonnets Concerning Jesus" {Poetical Works, i. 253).
ST. LUKE XXI. 19 419
If Growth is a^ vital as distinguished from a mechanical process ; it partakes, therefore, of tHe mystery which envelops the essence of life wherever it appears; it is inexplicable and unsolvable. It cannot be understood and it cannot be imitated ; it has the perennial interest and wonder of the miraculous. As we study it, the impression deepens within us that we are face to face with a method which not only transcends our understanding but from which our finest skill is differentiated, not only in degree, but in kind. Men have done wonderful things with thought, craft, and tools; but the manner of the unfolding of a wild flower is as great a mystery to-day as it was when science began to look, to compare, and to discover. Between the thing that grows and the thing that is made there is a gulf set which has never been crossed. Mechanism is marvellous, but growth is miraculous.^ From the seed to the fruit, from the egg to the perfected animal, from the primordial cell to the complete man, the process by which life evolves its potency and discloses its aims is the process of growth. No other method is known to nature, and the universality of this method, and the completeness with which, so far as we can see, life is limited to it, put it in importance on a level with the mysterious force to which it is bound in indissoluble union. Hence, next in importance to the fact of life, comes the method of life-growth, not by additions from without, but by evolution from within.^
4. The growth of the soul, though imperceptible, may be none the less real. Nature, moves slowly, advancing by hair's-breadths, augmenting by the scruple. If we had lived on this earth from its very beginning until now, we should have thought it standing still, so tardy its action and minute the individual result ; but if we recall the geological age when not a plant was on the earth, and then compare that barren epoch with the modern world blushing like a rainbow with ten thousand flowers, it is patent, after all, that the development of the planet has gone on un- restingly, however silently and deliberately. It is the same with the history of civilization. Had we lived through the long ages since man first appeared on the earth until now, we should have thought him ever standing still, so gradual and insignificant have been the successive changes and transformations of which he has been the subject ; but compare the flint instruments, the rude vessels, and the grotesque decorations of a primitive kitchen-
1 H. W. Mabie.
420 THE WINNING OF THE SOUL
midden, with the splendid treasures of an International Exhibition, and the progress is as indisputable as it is glorious. So with the spiritual development of the race ; we cannot mark the steps of its onward march ; but the moral barbarism of the ages, by fine degrees which escape our eye, passes into the pure splendour of the millennial world. " What is to last for ever takes a long time to grow." And so it is also with the spiritual development of a man's life.
TIf Most men, when they grow old, are satisfied to be what they are. They have lived their lives, and wait quietly for the final summons. Their habits are too rigid to be easily changed, and they have no longer the force to make the attempt. Or they become indifferent, first about outward things, and then about themselves. Or they live in the past and think of what they have been, not of what they are, still less of what they may become. Or, if unsatisfied with themselves, they despair of im- provement and sadly say, with Swift: "I am what I am." Jowett, as we know, thought very differently. To the last he wished to make the most of life, improving not others only, but himself. With him moral growth was a life-long process ; the ideal was always before him, leading him upwards and onwards. Often weary, often in pain, conscious of failing powers in body and mind, through doubt and failure, he toiled on,