INTRODUCTION

There is a fine passage in one of Keats's Letters in which the poet says that our world is created primarily as a place for making souls — in his phrase it is "a vale of soul-making."

We are just now so absorbed with external tasks and so occupied with the solution of problems in our outside world that most of us hardly have time to consider whether we have any souls or not. We allow that question to await its turn for an answer. But there are some questions - and this is precisely one of them which cannot be postponed while outer issues are being settled. In fact all outer issues are intricately tied up with just this inner one. It turns out to be forever true that the inner aspect which we call morale is the main factor even in contests which are supposed to be only external. Those impalpable things which we name faith and vision and spirit and nerve are greater elements in the determination even of outside victories than are miraculous long-distance guns. The conviction that our fun

damental aims are righteous is an unspeakable asset. Moreover, it appears as clearly evident now as it was two thousand years ago in Syria that it is of no use or profit to win the whole world if the inner life and self-respect are lost in the process; that houses and lands, territory and spheres of influence, are a poor substitute for that intangible thing which we call the soul.

Some day, near or remote, this war will be over. These unparalleled armies will demobilize and these multitudes of young men who have been living under most unwonted human conditions and have been facing death every day in appalling shapes will return to the pursuits which they have intermitted for this vast business of Armageddon. The new tasks of reorganization, rehabilitation and reconstruction awaiting them and us will be fully as unparalleled as the modes and magnitude of the warfare have been. And beyond any question the most important preparation for this immense work of rebuilding the wrecked and shattered world will be the clarification and fortification of the soul. There will be, no doubt, enormous economic issues to be settled. We shall be confronted with a wholly novel group of political problems. It will be a world charged with unusual dynamic social aspirations which must be

dealt with. But still deeper than all other issues will be the issues of the soul.

We cannot build this new world of ours out of material stuff alone. It will not be a matter solely of iron and coal and foodstuffs. It will, as always, be a matter of creative faith, of spiritual vision in a word, the ultimate issue will turn upon the quality and character of the soul of those of us who are to do the building. We must be on our guard against low and miserable material aims which would put the holiest hopes of our age again in imminent peril. We must restore trust and confidence in a living God who is not off beyond and above the storm and stress of life, but in the very pulse and flow of it all, and whose will for a good world is the deepest reality of our universe. We shall certainly care less than we once did for non-essentials in religion, for the external counters, for the time-worn survivals of bitter controversies, but we shall, if we are wise, care more than ever for the central realities by which men live. St. Augustine was right when he said: "My life shall now be a real life, being wholly full of Thee." Variations in external matters will become are already becomingunimportant and negligible. The things which form and fashion the soul and set it on "the path

to that which is Best" will be the abiding things and the only ones of any permanent value for vital religion.

We do not want a religion which meets the needs of experts alone and moves in a region beyond the reach of common men and women who have no taste for the intricacies of theology. If religion is, as I profoundly believe, the essential way to the full realization of life, we, who claim to know about it, ought to interpret it so that its meaning stands out plain and clear to those who most need it to live by. I have always believed and maintained that the apparent lack of popular interest in it is largely due to the awkward and blundering way in which it has been presented to the mind and heart of those who all the time carry deep within themselves inner hungers and thirsts which nothing but God can satisfy. I do not want to write or print a line which does not at least bear the mark and seal of reality and which will not make some genuine fact of life more plain and sure.

The struggle for a conquering inner faith has in these strenuous days been laid upon us all. The easy, inherited, second-hand faith will not do for any of us now. We cannot stand the stern issues of life and death with any feeble, formal