It is well to emphasize this truth, for it conveys a lesson which we can
learn from history at the present time with much profit to ourselves. It
means that reconstruction of character and reorientation of attention
must precede reconstruction of society; that the Sufi is right when he
declares that the whole secret lies in looking in one direction and
living in one way. Again and again it has been proved, that those who
aim at God do better work than those who start with the declared
intention of benefiting their fellow-men. We must _be_ good before we
can _do_ good; be real before we can accomplish real things. No
generalized benevolence, no social Christianity, however beautiful and
devoted, can take the place of this centring of the spirit on eternal
values; this humble, deliberate recourse to Reality. To suppose that it
can do so, is to fly in the face of history and mistake effect for
cause.

This brings us to the _Second Character_: the rich completeness of the
spiritual life, the way in which it fuses and transfigures the
complementary human tendencies to contemplation and action, the
non-successive and successive aspects of reality. "The love of God,"
said Ruysbroeck, "is an indrawing _and_ outpouring tide";[51] and
history endorses this. In its greatest representatives, the rhythm of
adoration and work is seen in an accentuated form. These people seldom
or never answer to the popular idea of idle contemplatives. They do not
withdraw from the stream of natural life and effort, but plunge into it
more deeply, seek its heart. They have powers of expression and
creation, and use them to the full. St. Paul, St. Benedict, St. Bernard,
St. Francis, St. Teresa, St. Ignatius organizing families which shall
incarnate the gift of new life; Fox, Wesley and Booth striving to save
other men; Mary Slessor driven by vocation from the Dundee mill to the
African swamps--these are characteristic of them. We perceive that they