Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter IV Not Rejection, but Redemption SELF-DENIAL lies at the base of all noble living and of every form of noble activity; and no one attains to supreme moral excellence, or to a high degree of skill in any art or profession, without thoroughly subjecting impulse, inclination, and passion to the higher and finer ends towards which he moves. To excel in any craft or skill involves a clear and definite setting aside of many things which are at moments almost irresistible in their appeal to our desires and impulses; and it is quite as much by what he discards as by what he accepts that the worker evidences his mastery of his materials and his tools. Behind every great career there lies a denial of self of which the world knows nothing, unless it have the wit to discern in the finished product not only the visible traces of skill, but also those invisible achievements of the will over self- indulgence of all kinds which give the heart courage, the spirit poise, and the mind clearness of vision. Behind noble productiveness in the arts there is a heroism of toil and consecration of which no trace remains save that perfection of line or form which is the last fruit of victorious striving. In like manner, the life of the spirit, if it be fruitful, luminous, and progressive, begins and continues in clear sovereignty of spiritual purpose over all confusing or diverting aims and impulses. But self-denial is the beginning, never the end, of the true life of man. There are times, it is true, when to deny is more positive than to affirm, and to protest is the most courageous and effective way of announcing a new truth. The first followers of Christ, living in a society saturated with the spirit of paganism, confronted on every side by pagan forms, services, ceremonies, found their…
