Page:The Hope of the Great Community (1916).djvu/147

 rebellion, there has always stood the interest which has taught me what I nowadays try to express by teaching that we are saved through the community.

The resulting doctrine of life and of the nature of truth and of reality which I have tried to work out, to connect with logical and metaphysical issues, and to teach to my classes, now seems to me not so much romanticism, as a fondness for defining, for articulating, and for expounding the perfectly real, concrete, and literal life of what we idealists call the “spirit,” in a sense which is indeed Pauline, but not merely mystical, super-individual; not merely romantic, difficult to understand, but perfectly capable of exact and logical statement.

The best concrete instance of the life of a community with which I have had the privilege to become well acquainted has been furnished to me by my own Seminary, one whose meetings you have so kindly and graciously permitted me to attend as leader, on this to me so precious occasion.