temporal goals of distinction and wealth towards its eternal goals, and
perpetuate standing and wealth in a higher form, for a man will then have
sought them not for themselves and handled them for the use they can be.
To keep a person from premature spiritual experience, nn. 221-233, is
obviously a law of providence, guarding against relapse and consequent
profanation of what had become sacred to him.

The paradox of divine foreknowledge and human freedom, regularly
discussed in studies of providence, receives an explanation which becomes
more and more enlightening in the course of the book. The paradox,
probably nowhere else discussed, of man's thinking and willing to all
appearance all by himself, and of the fact that volition and thought come
to him from beyond him, receives a similar, cumulative answer. The
tension between the divine will and human self-will is a subject that
pervades the book; to that subject the profoundest insights into the
hidden activity of providence and into human nature are brought. On the
question, "Is providence only general or also detailed?" the emphatic
answer is that it cannot be general unless it takes note of the least
things. On miracle and on chance conclusions unusual in religious thought
meet the reader. The inequalities, injustices and tragedies in life which
raise doubts of the divine care are faced in a long chapter after the
concept of providence has been spread before the reader. What would be
the point in considering them before what providence is has been
considered? Against what manner of providence are the arguments valid? A
chapter such as this, on doubts of providence and on the mentality which
cherishes them, becomes a monograph on the subject, as the chapter on
premature spiritual experience, with the risk of relapse and profanation,
becomes a monograph on kinds of profanation.

Coming by revelation and by a lengthy other-world experience on