Page:The Power of the Spirit.djvu/94



Rh which the features can be easily traced. They are these:

'1. A feeling of being in a wider life than that of this world's selfish little interests; and a conviction, not merely intellectual, but as it were sensible, of the existence of an Ideal Power. &hellip; [Love.]

'2. A sense of the friendly continuity of the ideal power with our own life, and a willing self-surrender to its control. [Peace.]

'3. An immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of the containing selfhood melt down. [Joy.]

'4. A shifting of the emotional centre towards loving and harmonious affections, towards "yes, yes", and away from "no", where the claims of the non-ego are concerned. [The five Social Qualities.]'

He adds that these fundamental inner conditions have characteristic practical consequences, viz. (a) Asceticism, (b) Strength of Soul, (c) Purity, and (d) Charity. These all come under the one individual Constraining Quality—Self-control, except Charity, which is implicit in the whole of S. Paul's list, and which he analyses in the most famous of his panegyrics.

That analysis is so well done by James that it leaves comparatively little to be said about the meaning of the harvest of the Spirit.

Love, I take it, does begin with that 'feeling of being in a wider life', love both to God and to Man; and for the rest love cannot be defined—it can only be sung about. The general character of S. Paul's