That there is such a power, which one can not indeed logically prove, but which he can put to the test and himself experience,--this is the mysterious truth of religion; and it would be much less of a mystery if all men, if but once in their life, would venture the trial whether there is such a power. To be sure, if any one does not want to let quite go of his pleasure-seeking and selfishness, or does not altogether yet desire to attain, at any cost, to something better than the ordinary life, then, in spite of his trial, he will not have a perfect experience of this power, and in that case the mere outward profession of a religion does not help him much. He remains on the whole as he is, even though he go to church every day. But if he has this will, then he receives this power, then he infallibly becomes another man, to such a degree that one may truthfully call it a new birth. Then only will all his natural gifts and knowledge become really alive in him and productive for the welfare of himself and others. The highest step is complete self-renunciation, in which a man is only the receptacle of divine thoughts and impulses; but it is very dangerous to work oneself into such a condition by the fantasy, before it comes of itself and is really at hand. The main thing in religion is not its immediate perfect attainment, but that every one who will may enter on the way and pass from a joyless existence to a gradually ascending life. This is the way to true culture, and every one must try to travel it by himself. It can not be taught; it can only be shown. The evidence that one has true culture is, first, a gradually increasing mental health and power, then a certain higher sagacity that comes in, and finally a peculiar, larger caliber of spirit which one can bring about in no other way, which one can not imitate, and which really forms the chief element in culture. Yet these thoroughly cultured men are, for all that, entirely natural human beings, but free from all pretence and vanity; free also from all struggling, from all seeking for life’s good things, on which human happiness does not have to depend, and in whose incessant pursuit men only lose their souls; free from all unhealthy pessimism, or monkish seclusion; free from fear or nervousness or impatience; cheerful and quiet in the innermost centre of their being, and continuing in their mental and spiritual soundness up to the highest goal of human life. “As their days, so is their strength,” as the Old Testament says with great beauty and truth. The highest imaginable degree of this culture is a complete devotion to all that is good and great, a devotion that no sort of trouble any longer clouds, or can cloud; it is that condition of the soul, mentally conceivable but seemingly rarely attained, in which there is no longer any battle with the sensual and the transitory, and the struggle of nature against the law of the spirit is completely at end.