Prior To An Individual's Encounter With The

Hence The Importance Of Patience In The New Testament, Which Becomes The Basic Constituent Of Christianity, More Central Even Than Humility: The Power To Wait, To Persevere, To Hold Out, To Endure To The End, Not To Transcend One's Own Limitations, Not To Force Issues By Playing The Hero Or The Titan, But To Practice The Virtue That Lies Beyond Heroism, The Meekness Of The Lamb Which Is Led.

We No Longer Dare To Believe In Beauty And We Make Of It A Mere Appearance In Order The More Easily To Dispose Of It. Our Situation Today Shows That Beauty Demands For Itself At Least As Much Courage And Decision As Do Truth And Goodness, And She Will Not Allow Herself To Be Separated And Banned From Her Two Sisters Without Taking Them Along With Herself In An Act Of Mysterious Vengeance. We Can Be Sure That Whoever Sneers At Her Name As If She Were The Ornament Of A Bourgeois Past -- Whether He Admits It Or Not -- Can No Longer Pray And Soon Will No Longer Be Able To Love.

Not Longer Loved Or Fostered By Religion, Beauty Is Lifted From Its Face As A Mask, And Its Absence Exposes Features On That Face Which Threaten To Become Incomprehensible To Man.

Christian Obedience, By Its Very Nature, Has A Heroic Character.

A Truth That Is Merely Handed On, Without Being Thought Anew From Its Very Foundations, Has Lost Its Vital Power.