AIMBOTLIAD

PREFACE.

As each age has its great soul to bring men back and hold them 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

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.

San José, Cal., January 21, 1912.