Spiritual values

Preface

The real values of life are spiritual. Every age seems to be materialistic in tendency. But this is an indication on the surface and does not represent the deeper conditions of human striving. Each era of civilization has had its ebb and jflow of spiritual endeavor. But there have always been heroic souls in every step of progress who stemmed the onrush of the materialistic. The flood-tide of faith has always returned. On this tide peoples and nations have gone forward.

So in the individual life there is the fluctuation of spiritual desire and effort. It would seem at times that individual men had a surfeit of spirituality and deliberately turned to the materialistic. But the sea of faith in the human soul does not go out forever. It returns. And on the full ocean of the spiritual man really rides.

PEEFACE.

As each age lias its great soul to bring men back and bold tbem to faith, so each individual has an impulse which keeps him in the stream of the eternal. In the struggles of life we are only too truly brought in touch with the materialistic. But our calmer moods recall and establish the spiritual. All men covet inward peace. In this desire they are spiritual far more than they appreciate, and if they are true to their religious instincts, they actualize spirituality even in their unconscious yearning for the good and abiding.

Because we seem to be hurried on in the tide of the materialistic it is well to emphasize strongly the presence and the importance of the spiritual. Any serious attempt to do this ought to add to the hope and constancy of human effort to realize the worthy. Young men and women, especially, should have the deeper aspects of life continually set before them. They are interested in the fundamental truths. Skepticism does not represent their real attitude

PREFACE.

to things eternal. They are "unwilling rather than intentional doubters. They are often indifferent, it is true, to spiritual needs, but this fact is not so discouraging as it appears. They recognize that the faith of the fathers is still a living faith, and are far more ready to accept than reject this faith. They demand, however, that it be put into new forms and be interpreted in terms of to-day.

To emphasize the vital nature of the spiritual is the purpose of the following essays. Stress is placed in each essay upon the deeper and abiding aspects of life. Further than in this stress no especial consecutiveness of thought is claimed for the essays. They are published with the hope of adding to the material which helps to create and strengthen faith.

William W. Guth.

Contents

Page.

I. "Seek Ye My Face," - - - 13

II. Giving What We Have, - - 21