established functions of body and mind. These are all serviceable and
organic; but to become spiritual all need to be redeemed, or drawn
over into the field of consciousness, where our special stamp may be
set upon them. When we speak of a good act, we mean an act which shows
the results of such redemption, one whose every part has been studied
in relation to every other part, and has thus been made to bear our
own image and superscription.

And this is essentially the Christian ideal, that spirit shall be lord
of nature. I ought to reject my natural life, accounting it not my
life at all. Until shaped by myself, it is merely my opportunity for
life, material furnished, out of which my true and conscious life may
be constructed. Widely is this contrasted with the pagan conceptions,
where man appears with powers as fixed as the things around him.
Indeed, in many forms of paganism there is no distinction between
persons and things. They are blended. And such blending usually
operates to the disparagement of the person; for things being more
numerous, and their laws more urgent, the powers of man become lost in
those of nature. Or if distinction is made, and men in some dim
fashion become aware that they are different from things, still it is
the tendency of paganism to subordinate person to nature. The child is
sacrificed to the sun. The sun is not thought of as existing for the
child. From the Christian point of view everything seems turned upside
down. Man is absorbed in natural forces, natural forces are reverenced
as divine, and self-consciousness--if noticed at all--is regarded as
an impertinent accident.

In the Christian ideal all this is reversed. Man is called to be
master of himself, and therefore of all else. The many beautiful
adjustments of the natural world are thought to possess dignity only