"But still, all that I did or could do, conscience would roar
night and day."
Saint Augustine and Alline both emerged into the smooth waters of
inner unity and peace, and I shall next ask you to consider more
closely some of the peculiarities of the process of unification,
when it occurs. It may come gradually, or it may occur abruptly;
it may come through altered feelings, or through altered powers
of action; or it may come through new intellectual insights, or
through experiences which we shall later have to designate as
'mystical.' However it come, it brings a characteristic sort of
relief; and never such extreme relief as when it is cast into the
religious mould. Happiness! happiness! religion is only one of
the ways in which men gain that gift. Easily, permanently, and
successfully, it often transforms the most intolerable misery
into the profoundest and most enduring happiness.
But to find religion is only one out of many ways of reaching
unity; and the process of remedying inner incompleteness and
reducing inner discord is a general psychological process, which
may take place with any sort of mental material, and need not
necessarily assume the religious form.
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