art the Love wherewith the heart loves Thee."[73] The much advertized
herd instinct may weld us into a mob at the mercy of unreasoning
passions; but it can also make us living members of the Communion of
Saints. The appeals of the prophet and the revivalist, the Psalmist's
"Taste and see," the Baptist's "Change your hearts," are all invitations
to an alteration in the direction of desire, which would turn our
instinctive energies in a new direction and begin the domestication of
the human soul for God.

This, then, is the real business of conversion and of the character
building that succeeds it; the harnessing of instinct to idea and its
direction into new and more lofty channels of use, transmuting the
turmoil of man's merely egoistic ambitions, anxieties and emotional
desires into fresh forms of creative energy, and transferring their
interest from narrow and unreal to universal objectives. The seven
deadly sins of Christian ethics--Pride, Anger, Envy, Avarice, Sloth,
Gluttony, and Lust--represent not so much deliberate wrongfulness, as
the outstanding forms of man's uncontrolled and self-regarding
instincts; unbridled self-assertion, ruthless acquisitiveness, and
undisciplined indulgence of sense. The traditional evangelical virtues
of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience which sum up the demands of the
spiritual life exactly oppose them. Over against the self-assertion of
the proud and angry is set the ideal of humble obedience, with its wise
suppleness and abnegation of self-will. Over against the acquisitiveness
of the covetous and envious is set the ideal of inward poverty, with its
liberation from the narrow self-interest of I, Me and Mine. Over against
the sensual indulgence of the greedy, lustful and lazy is set the ideal
of chastity, which finds all creatures pure to enjoy, since it sees them
in God, and God in all creatures. Yet all this, rightly understood, is
no mere policy of repression. It is rather a rational policy of release,