The divine can mean no single quality, it must mean a
group of qualities, by being champions of which in alternation,
different men may all find worthy missions. Each attitude being
a syllable in human nature's total message, it takes the whole of
us to spell the meaning out completely. So a "god of battles"
must be allowed to be the god for one kind of person, a god of
peace and heaven and home, the god for another. We must frankly
recognize the fact that we live in partial systems, and that
parts are not interchangeable in the spiritual life. If we are
peevish and jealous, destruction of the self must be an element
of our religion; why need it be one if we are good and
sympathetic from the outset? If we are sick souls, we require a
religion of deliverance; but why think so much of deliverance, if
we are healthy-minded?[331] Unquestionably, some men have the
completer experience and the higher vocation, here just as in the
social world; but for each man to stay in his own experience,
whate'er it be, and for others to tolerate him there, is surely
best.
[331] From this point of view, the contrasts between the healthy
and the morbid mind, and between the once-born and the twice-born
types, of which I spoke in earlier lectures (see pp.
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