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Bennett, Arnold, 1867-1931

"English Prose A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice"

Yet such personal service--your
special life cause, your task, your vocation--is your way of furthering
the ends of universal humanity. And if you are enlightened, you know
this fact. Through your loyalty you, then, know yourself to be kin to
all the loyal. You hereupon conceive the loyal as one brotherhood, one
invisible church for which and in which you live. The spirit dwells in
this invisible church,--the holy spirit that wills the unity of all in
fidelity and in service. Hidden from you by all the natural
estrangements of the present life, this common life of all the loyal,
this cause which is the one cause of all the loyal, is that for which
you live. In spirit you are really sundered from none of those who
themselves live in the spirit.
All this, I say, is what it is the faith of all the loyal to regard as
the real life in which we live and move and have our being, precisely in
so far as men come to understand what loyalty is. Thus, then, in
general, to be loyal is to believe that there are real causes. And to be
universally loyal is to believe that the one cause of loyalty itself,
the invisible church of all the loyal, is a reality; something as real
as we are.


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