E. Stanley Jones Abundant Living (1942)

“One may be truly sincere and at the same time find within himself divided loyalties. He may not be covering anything—even from himself—and yet he may face the fact that he is trying to divide his loyalties between mutually exclusive things. Whether the enemy be covered insincerity or frank divided loyalties, in either case the result is the same: the abilities, the effectiveness, and the happiness of the individual are canceled out. There can be no abundant living with inward division. And yet how prevalent are divided souls. We believe in God with the top of our minds, but down deep at the bottom we obey something else as the way of life. We live by . . . ‘straddle arrangements and compromises between our allegiance to the surface level and the Divine Creator. We are trying to live several selves at once, without all our selves being organized by a single mastering life within us” . . . How much stronger we would be if we were living unanimously—all our life energies devoted to one great end.”

AP Divided Loyalties