But in order that this may be able to happen to us, we must first be free from self-love, from self-concern in all its forms; that is the difficult work that is wrought within us slowly, with many a halting-place and with much cross-bearing. For we must be quite empty of ourselves before we can receive everything that we need for our understanding and feeling, but it must come in daily rations like the manna of the Old Testament, not all at once as the crafty “old man” would much rather have it, so as to be as independent as possible of God’s daily grace; that is the “last error, that is worse than the first.” To train us thereto, so that we may receive the right gifts in their fulness, is the meaning of our life-guidance up to this point; only then, and not before, will our activity be full of blessing. In this connection the “social question” comes in, not only for the men of our time, but of every time; it has always existed, and always will exist, so long as there are human beings; it will never find its solution either through Church or through State, but only through the ethical power and the personal love of infinitely many individuals, each one of whom must, in the sphere of work indicated to him, do that which is specially laid upon him, and neither bury nor exchange his talent. That is his outward task in life, which he may neither evade nor be unfaithful to, and only when and in so far as he is just to this shall he teach it to others also, and help, during his lifetime, to maintain this teaching of love upon the earth. When once money, ambition, and pleasure no longer play any considerable rôle with a man, then he finds so much leisure time upon his hands that he must really look about him for some activity to fill it up, else he runs the risk of falling back, through tedium, to where he was before. This period is, therefore, essentially made up of work and struggle, but if all goes rightly, the work is more and more joyous, done with greater and greater gladness, and without any feeling of distress, and the struggle against everything undivine in oneself or in others is more and more victorious, more and more quiet; and in this period there is finally “a rest that remaineth for the people of God.” God will give them the end they are waiting for, and an end that is not sad, like that of so many noble men who had a different aim in life. Schiller’s picture is not the right one when he says, “Quietly, with vessel barely saved, the old man returns to the harbor from which, in youth, he set out with a thousand masts.” No; thankful for all he has done and suffered, content with what he has become through God’s mercy, and with the confident prospect of a yet greater and better field of action, he already, without waiting for his death-bed, lays his life-accounts to one side, and looks with simple quietness upon the (for him) unimportant transition into a new sphere of life. IV