Ephesians 4:22–25
You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put
off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires;
to be made new in the attitude of your minds;
and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness
and holiness.
Therefore
each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we
are all members of one body.
The new step has been taken
and is being taken. Already the new men are dotted here and there all over the earth.
Some, as I have admitted, are still hardly recognizable: but others can be recognized.
Every now and then one meets them. Their very voices and faces are different
from ours; stronger, quieter, happier, more radiant. They begin where most of
us leave off. They are, I say, recognizable; but you must know what to look
for. They will not be very like the idea of "religious people" which
you have formed from your general reading. They do not draw attention to
themselves. You tend to think that you are being kind to them when they are
really being kind to you. They love you more than other men do, but they need
you less. (We must get over wanting to be needed: in some goodish people,
specially women, that is the hardest of all temptations to resist.) They will
usually seem to have a lot of time: you will wonder where it comes from. When
you have recognized one of them, you will recognize the next one much more
easily. And I strongly suspect (but how should I know?) that they recognize one
another immediately and infallibly, across every barrier of color, sex, class,
age, and even of creeds. In that way, to become holy is rather like joining a
secret society. To put it at the very lowest, it must be great fun.
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