Only religious natures are—in the deepest meaning of the word—loving or faithful or creative. It is the same soul which in one person reveals itself in ecstasy of belief, in a second in ardour of creation, in a third in a great erotic passion, in the fourth as parental love, in others again as love of country, as enthusiasm for freedom, desire for reform. At times one and the same soul, a woman’s or a man’s, is kindled by all these passions. But never has the same soul been able _at the same time_ to feed all these passions in their highest potency. Whether it be God, a work, or a human being that the soul embraces with its entire devotion, the religious character of this devotion always evinces itself in increasing longing, an endless susceptibility, a more persistent search after means of expression, a continual service, an inexhaustible patience in waiting for reciprocal activity from the object of love. The religious strength of a feeling consists in this, that the soul in every work, every sorrow, every joy,—in a word, in every spiritual condition, every experience,—is, consciously as well as unconsciously, more closely united with God, with the work, with the beloved, until every finest fibre of one’s being reaches down to the profound depths which the object of love represents for the lover. In this necessary condition of concentration of the spiritual life is found the truth of woman’s complaint that the man, absorbed by his work, “no longer loves her”; the truth of the experience that earthly love indisputably detracts from the love of God; the truth of the frequent experience of husband and wife that with children the wealth of their spiritual life together is in certain respects inevitably diminished; the truth of man’s fear that woman’s absorption in a life-work personally dear to her must to a certain degree detract from her devotion to the home; the truth of the experience that the office of mother often interferes with the development of woman’s intellectual power. Only persons who distinguish themselves by what Heine called “exuberance of mental poverty,” or what I might call analogously an “abyss of superficiality,” have not experienced the severe and beautiful psychic truth of Jesus’ glorification of _simplicity_. The quiet harkening to the voice of God or to the inspiration of work or to the delicate vibrations of another soul, which daily, hourly, momentarily, are the conditions that enable the soul to live wholly in its belief, its work, its love, so that these feelings may grow stronger and the soul grow greater through these feelings—all this has “simplicity” as a condition; in a word, symmetrical unity, longing for completeness, inner poise, the swift emotion. Fidelity—to a belief, a work, a love—is no product of duty. It is a process of growth.