unduly momentous; one would tend to regard one's own features as in
a mirror and through a magnifying glass. But, on the other hand, it
is good, because it restores another kind of proportion; it is like
dipping oneself in the seclusion of a monastic cell. Nowadays the
image of the world, with all its sheets of detailed news, all its
network of communications, sets too deep a mark upon one's spirit.
We tend to believe that a man is lost unless he is overwhelmed with
occupation, unless, like the conjurer, he is keeping a dozen balls
in the air at once. Such a gymnastic teaches a man alertness,
agility, effectiveness. But it has got to be proved that one was
sent into the world to be effective, and it is not even certain
that a man has fulfilled the higher law of his being if he has made
a large fortune by business. A sagacious, shrewd, acute man of the
world is sometimes a mere nuisance; he has made his prosperous
corner at the expense of others, and he has only contrived to
accumulate, behind a little fence of his own, what was meant to be
the property of all. I have known a good many successful men, and I
cannot honestly say that I think that they are generally the better
for their success. They have often learnt self-confidence, the
shadow of which is a good-natured contempt for ineffective people;
the shadow, on the other hand, which falls on the contemplative man
is an undue diffidence, an indolent depression, a tendency to think
that it does not very much matter what any one does. But, on the
other hand, the contemplative man sometimes does grasp one very
important fact--that we are sent into the world, most of us, to
learn something about God and ourselves; whereas if we spend our
lives in directing and commanding and consulting others, we get so
swollen a sense of our own importance, our own adroitness, our own
effectiveness, that we forget that we are tolerated rather than
needed. it is better on the whole to tarry the Lord's leisure, than