There is no inner life that is not also an outer life. To withdraw from the stress and strain of practical action and from the complication of problems into the quiet cell of the inner life in order to build its domain undisturbed is the sure way to lose the inner life. The finest of all the mystical writers of the fourteenth century—the author of Theologia Germanica—knew this as fully as we of this psychologically trained generation know it. He intensely desired a rich inner life, but he saw that to be beautiful within he must live a radiant and effective life in the world of men and events. “I would fain be,” he says, “to the eternal God what a man’s hand is to a man”—i.e. he seeks, with all the eagerness of his glowing[vi] nature, to be an efficient instrument of God in the world. In the practice of the presence of God, the presence itself becomes more sure and indubitable. Religion does not consist of inward thrills and private enjoyment of God; it does not terminate in beatific vision. It is rather the joyous business of carrying the Life of God into the lives of men—of being to the eternal God what a man’s hand is to a man. There is no one exclusive “way” either to the supreme realities or to the loftiest experiences of life. The “way” which we individuals select and proclaim as the only highway of the soul back to its true home turns out to be a revelation of our own private selves fully as much as it is a revelation of a via sacra to the one goal of all human striving. Life is a very rich and complex affair and it forever floods over and inundates any feature which we pick out as essential or as pivotal to its consummation. God so completely overarches all that is and He is so genuinely[vii] the fulfillment of all which appears incomplete and potential that we cannot conceivably insist that there shall be only one way of approach from the multiplicity of the life which we know to the infinite Being whom we seek.
Most persons are strangely prone to use the “principle of parsimony.” They appear to have a kind of fascination for the dilemma of either-or alternatives. “Faith” or “works” is one of these great historic alternatives. But this cleavage is too artificial for full-rounded reality. Each of these “halves” cries for its other, and there cannot be any great salvation until we rise from the poverty of either half to the richness of the unite............