worth and veracity, not upon its adherence to literal fact, but upon its perception and portrayal of the underlying truth, of which fact is but the phenomenal and imperfect shadow. And it can have nothing to do with personal vice or virtue, in the way either of condemning the one or vindicating the other; it can only treat them as elements in its picture--as factors in human destiny. For the notion commonly entertained that the practice of virtue gives us a claim upon the Divine Exchequer (so to speak), and the habit of acting virtuously for the sake of maintaining our credit in society, and ensuring our prosperity in the next world,--in so thinking and acting we misapprehend the true inwardness of the matter. To cultivate virtue because its pays, no matter what the sort of coin in which payment is looked for, is to be the victims of a lamentable delusion. For such virtue makes each man jealous of his neighbor; whereas the aim of Providence is to bring about the broadest human fellowship. A man's physical body separates him from other men; and this fact disposes him to the error that his nature is also a separate possession, and that he can only be "good" by denying himself. But the only goodness that is really good is a spontaneous and impersonal evolution, and this occurs, not where self-denial has been practised, but only where a man feels himself to be absolutely on the same level of desert or non-desert as are the mass of his fellow-creatures. There is no use in obeying the commandments, unless it be done, not to make one's self more deserving than another of God's approbation, but out of love for goodness and truth in themselves, apart from any personal considerations. The difference between true religion and formal religion is that the first leads us to abandon all personal claims to salvation, and to care only for the salvation of humanity as a whole; whereas the latter stimulates is to practise outward self-denial, in order that our real self may be exalted. Such self-denial results not in humility, but in spiritual pride.