Page:Personality (Lectures delivered in America).djvu/123

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THE SECOND BIRTH
105

its vigour of youth, glad in its own beauty and freedom of movement.

Our greatest hope is in this, that suffering is there. It is the language of imperfection. Its very utterance carries in it the trust in the perfect, like the baby's cry which would be dumb, if it had no faith in the mother. This suffering has driven man with his prayer to knock at the gate of the infinite in him, the divine, thus revealing his deepest instinct, his unreasoning faith in the reality of the ideal,—the faith shown in the readiness for death, in the renunciation of all that belongs to the self. God's life flowing in its outpour of self-giving has touched man's life which is also abroad in its career of freedom. When the discord rings out man cries, "Asato ma sad gamaya"—"Help me to pass through the unreal to the real." It is the surrender of his self to be tuned for the music of the soul. This surrender is waited for, because the spiritual harmony cannot be effected except through freedom. Therefore man's willing surrender to the infinite is the commencement of the union. Only then can God's love fully act upon man's soul through the medium of freedom. This surrender is our soul's free choice of its life of coöperation with God,—coöperation in the work of the perfect