generosity⁹⁰, magnanimity,admiration, loyalty⁹¹, or enthusiasm of self-surrender, the result is always the same. That whole raftof cowardly obstructions, which in tame persons and dull moods are sovereign impediments toaction, sinks away at once. Our conventionality,[147] our shyness, laziness, and stinginess, ourdemands for precedent⁹² and permission, for guarantee and surety, our small suspicions, timidities,despairs, where are they now? Severed⁹³ like cobwebs, broken like bubbles in the sun-"Wo sind die Sorge nun⁴³ und Noth Die mich noch gestern wollt' erschlaffen? Ich scham' michdess' im Morgenroth."The flood we are borne on rolls them so lightly under that their very contact is unfelt. Set free ofthem, we float and soar and sing. This auroral⁹⁴ openness and uplift gives to all creative ideal levelsa bright and caroling quality, which is nowhere more marked than where the controlling emotion isreligious. "The true monk," writes an Italian mystic, "takes nothing with him but his lyre."[147] See the case on p. 69, above, where the writer describes his experiences of communionwith the Divine as consisting "merely in the TEMPORARY OBLITERATION⁹⁵ OF THECONVENTIONALITIES which usually cover my life."We may now turn from these psychological generalities to those fruits of the religious statewhich form the special subject of our present lecture. The man who lives in his religious centre ofpersonal energy, and is actuated by spiritual enthusiasms, differs from his previous carnal self inperfectly definite ways.

The new ardor⁹⁶ which burns in his breast consumes in its glow the lower "noes" which formerlybeset him, and keeps him immune against infection from the entire groveling portion of his nature.

Magnanimities once impossible are now easy;

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