do not. We are wrong when we launch out into the current of life, and
wrong when we withdraw ourselves from its waters. We are wrong when we
insist upon our personal responsibility, and wrong when we look to the
Church to undertake it.

II. (i) Here then, indeed, is a Paradox; but it is one which our Lord
Himself expressly emphasizes. For, first, there is nothing on which He
so repeatedly insists as the supreme and singular value of every soul's
salvation. If this is not attained, all is lost. _What shall it profit a
man if he shall gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own
soul?_ All else, then, must be sacrificed if this is in peril. No human
possession, however great, can be weighed against this. No human tie,
however sacred, can hold against its claim. Not only must _houses and
lands_, but _father and mother and wives and children_ must take second
place, so soon as eternal life is at stake. And yet, somehow or another,
this salvation can only be attained by loss; self can only live if it be
mortified, can only be saved by its own denial. Individuality, as has
been said, can only be preserved by the loss of Individualism.

(ii) But this is not peculiar to the spiritual sphere; it is a paradox
that is true, in some sense, of life on every plane--civic,
intellectual, artistic, human. The man that desires to bring his
intellectual and personal powers to their highest pitch must
continually be sinking them, so to speak, in the current of his fellows,
continually exhausting, using, and wearing them out. He must risk, and
indeed inevitably lose, in a very real sense, his personal point of
view, if he is to have a point of view that is worth possessing; he must
be content to see his theories and his thoughts modified, merged,
changed, and destroyed, if his thought is to be of value. For, so far as
he withdraws himself from his fellows into a physical or mental