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There are many other spiritual energies, some of which will be dealt with specifically or implicitly in the later chapters of this book. Not often in the history of the modern world certainly have spiritual energies seemed more urgently needed than to-day. Our troubles consist largely now of failure to lay hold of moral and spiritual forces that lie near at hand and to utilize powers that are within our easy reach. Our stock of faith and hope and love has run low and we realize only feebly what mighty energies they can be.

I hope that these short essays may help in some slight way to indicate that the ancient realities by which men live still abide, and that the invisible energies of the spirit are real, as they have always been real. We have had an impressive demonstration that a civilization built on external force and measured in terms of economic achievements cannot stand its ground and is unable to speak to the condition of persons endowed and equipped as we are. We are bound to build a higher civilization, to create a greater culture, and to form a truer kingdom of life or we must write “Mene” on all human undertakings. That is our task now, and it is a serious one for which we shall need all the energies that the universe puts at our disposal. I am told that when the great Hellgate bridge was being built over the East River in New York the engineers came upon an old derelict ship, lying embedded in the river mud, just where one of the central piers of the bridge was to go down through to its bedrock foundation. No tug boat could be found that was able to start the derelict from its ancient bed in the ooze. It would not move, no matter what force was applied. Finally, with a sudden inspiration one of the workers hit upon this scheme. He took a large flat-boat, which had been used to bring stone down the river, and he chained it to the old sunken ship when the tide was low. Then he waited for the great tidal energies to do their work. Slowly the rising tide, with all the forces of the ocean behind it and the moon above it, came up under the flat-boat, raising it inch by inch. And as it came up, lifted by irresistible power, the derelict came up with it, until it was entirely out of the mud that had held it. Then the boat, with its subterranean load, was towed out to sea where the old waterlogged ship was unchained and allowed to drop forever out of sight and reach.