Self Conquest The House of the Soul. By Evelyn Underhill.

(Methuen. 2s.) Tins little volume, in paper cover, with no table of contents, and prefaced by a disclaimer that it is in any sense a literary

work, 'consists of the notes of a series of addresses, and is intended rather to stimulate meditation than to give information." We may say at once that Miss Underhill is wrong in saying it is not " literary " : though simple and unassuming in plan, it is rich in thought and informed by that lively and graceful style our readers know. .

In one of her earlier poems, Miss .Underhill wrote of the Great West road that "pours the city's dim desires towards the undefiled" with "the dreaming few, the slaving crew, the motley caste Of life" ; now, with a similar but more intimate and homely vision, she takes us into a little house, :those downstairs and upstairs rooms she shows. us, as well as the watch-tower of faith :— _ "With so little leisure and so languid an inclination, it seems better to mutter' a few prayers whilst we tidy the kitchen ; content Ourselves with the basement view of the world; and rationalise this interior laziness as humility of soul. But -if we do make the effort needed for the ascent, what a revelation ! Busy on the ground floor, we never realized we had a place like this ; that our small house shot up so high into Heaven.'

There are hundreds of analogies between the worlds visible and invisible : Miss Underhill sweeps the best of them into our everyday life, and with a sure hand. The task was hot an easy one. Much human sympathy and common-; sense, inneh learning. , and above all a keep sense of humour were required to hold the balance between the sublime and

the ridiculous. Miss Underhill has succeeded, and made a beautiful book which will be a real help to many people of many varying minds.

From the "spire-top of the soul," she shows us that there are two views ; one of infinite spaces leading the eye outward to the horizon, the other, of God manifest in His creation. Concerning the first great vision she warns us : "Even those who have yet seen nothing from this window should resist the :temptation. to veil its gaunt outline in , curtains

embroidered with symbolic 'designs; As travellers who go up to Darjeeling and wait for many days to see the majestic vision of the Himalaya at dawn, a moment will come when,

if they wait long enough and look high enough, they will see the mighty summits hanging in the air ; and after that the world will never be the same to them again."

. The other window is that of the Eternal self-revealed in human ways :--

" We pierce the disconcerting veil of appearance, and discern that Holy -Creativity, making, rectifying, drawing all things to itself. At times a' lovely, glint transfigures even the smallest living things ! We see the kitten play in Paradise. The humble iuhabitanti of the hedgerows suddenly reveal their origin, their kinship with God... . To the eye of Faith the common life of. humanity, not any abnormal or unusual experience, is material of God's redeeming action. The Palestinian glow Which irradiates the homely mysteries of the Gospel, 'and gives to them the quality of eternal life, lights up for Faith the slums and suburbs, the bustle, games and industries of- the modern world."

But we. have begun_, at _the wrong end of Miss_ Ijkiderbill's House. It -is not, she tells us with a-Chinning wit, "an unusually picturesque and interesting mansion, set in its own grounds with no other building -in siglif.• . It gets itr Water from-the main; and italight-freinYthe gent4alsitoOlyor

The full life of the spirit can never consist in living upstairs, . thus ignoring the fact that the upper rooms are supported by those below ; nor does it consist "in the constant, exas- perated investigation of the shortcomings of the basement." "In the common stuff of life which He blessed by His presence the saints have ever seen the homely foundations of holiness." "Man is being taught how to run that ground-floor life which he cannot get rid of and must not ignore." The humility of Prudence, the discipline of Temperance are inculcated with an audacious reverence that no other living writer could manage so expertly. The love of God is like central heating, she tells us : "those who come to the soul's house should find it nicely warmed all over ; its inner chamber must not be like one of those rooms which have a fierce little gas stove in one corner and a deadly chill everywhere else." Nor must we be too fastidious in our choice of food. "There are intemperate devotional meals. . . Our ghostly insides are much like our natural insides ; they need a certain amount of what the doctors call 'roughage,' and seldom thrive on too refined a diet." .

But we may find thoughts in these pages that take us beyond the necessary spring-cleaning and management of our inner castle or semi-detached villa. To some of us the passages on birds, the stars, and the power of Hope will be among the best things that Miss Underhill has yet written. She compares the courage of our airmen with the willow-wren ot chill-chaff, launching out on their oceanic journey, and says

I sometimes think that the divine gift of Hope—that confident tendency of the soul, that trust in the invisible, and in a real goal, a Country truly awaiting us—poured into man by God to give meaning and buoyancy to his life : all this was first, as it were, tried out on the birds. Long ages before we appeared, the clouds of tiny migrants swept over the face of the planet. Incarnate scraps of hope, courage, determination, they were ready at a given moment to leave all and follow the inward voice."

In the stars, those condensations of the universal substance able to radiate the energy we know as light, she sees an• apt parable to the supernatural universe in which we live and have our being, "delicately luminous with the love. oi God." And in Hope with its immense Creative power', emphasized throughout our Lord's teaching, we may find

the door to all human history, leading to the pathway of a better future.

"Social justice, education, child welfare, women's freedom—all these were hoped for long before they were achieved. And now, looking towards the future, it is the solemn duty of every awakened spirit to enlarge, deepen and enrich this hope for mankind. Evety movement of pessimism is a betrayal of the purposes of God;. a short-circuiting of the spiritual energy that flows from Him through living souls."

Even the mystery of the Trinity. Miss Underhill parallels by a picture of a baby and its mother. Yet to quote from what is already a condensed and carefully prepared parable of the spiritual life must necessarily be unsatisfactory. " No

imagery drawn from the life of sense," she is careful to say on her first page, "can ever be adequate to the strange and delicate contacts, tensions, demands and benedictions cf the life that lies beyond sense." Yet in so far as. it is possible, she has shown to us

"the traffic of Jacob's ladder Pitched between Heaven and 'Charing Cross."