I believe in your 'mission' even more than you do. It is men like you, who through great tribulations strive to enter the Kingdom, that God uses. The fact that you are two men, and that the true man—the Christ—is painfully yet surely being 'formed' in you, means that you will be able to appeal to others who are painfully conscious of their double consciousness and are often the slaves of the lower, inhuman self. Your wealth of affection will make you feel as St. Paul did—teknia mou, ous palin mechris ou morphothe Christos en humin.
[Transcriber's note: The Greek phrases in the above paragraph were transliterated as follows: teknia—tau, epsilon, kappa, nu, iota, alpha; mou—mu, omicron, upsilon; ous—omicron, upsilon, final sigma; palin—pi, alpha, lambda, iota, nu; mechris—mu, epsilon, ch, rho, iota, final sigma; ou—omicron, upsilon; morphothe—mu, omicron, rho, phi, omega, theta, eta; Christos—Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron, final sigma; en—epsilon, nu; humin—(rough breathing mark) upsilon, mu, iota, nu]
These words sum up for me, better than any others, my deepest wish for my friends. I fall back with desperate energy upon prayer, as the one power by which my wish can be realised.
You seem to look ahead almost more than is necessary. I delight in the feeling that I am in eternity, that I can serve God now fully and effectively, that the next piece of the road will come in sight when I am ready to walk on it 'I do not ask to see the distant scene.' I hate the unsettled feeling that I have not yet begun my main work.
Don't measure work by human standards of greatness. Your present occupation might well be the envy of angels—if they could envy.
But now I am lecturing. So it is time to shut up.…
I fear that the origin of evil is more of a mystery to me now than when I wrote that essay! But I still think that we are fighting a real being, one whom we can best describe as personal. His will, it seems to me, must be given to him by God. He has identified it with a hitherto unrealised potentiality for disobedience. In plain language, his will is free, and therefore capable of resisting God. I should like to have a talk with you some day about it. But, as you see, the problem is beyond me.…
It is a strength to me to feel that you are fighting the devil in yourself and others up in ——, and that I am 'one man' with you.
To D. B. K.
St. Moritz: January 1903.