And note that, working on this basis, we need not in order to find room
for the facts commit ourselves to the harsh dualism, the opposition
between nature and spirit, which is characteristic of some earlier forms
of Christian thought. In this dualism, too, we find simply an effort to
describe felt experience. It is an expression of the fact, so strongly
and deeply felt by the richest natures, that there _is_ an utter
difference in kind between the natural life of use and wont, as most of
us live it, and the life that is dominated by the spiritual
consciousness. The change is indeed so great, the transfiguration so
complete, that they seize on the strongest language in which to state
it. And in the good old human way, referring their own feelings to the
universe, they speak of the opposing and incompatible worlds of matter
and of spirit, of nature and of grace. But those who have most deeply
reflected, have perceived that the change effected is not a change of
worlds. It is rather such a change of temper and attitude as will
disclose within our one world, here and now, the one Spirit in the
diversity of His gifts; the one Love, in homeliest incidents as well as
noblest vision, laying its obligations on the soul; and so the true
nature and full possibilities of this our present life.

Although it is true that we must register our profound sense of the
transcendental character of this spirit-life, its otherness from mere
nature, and the humility and penitence in which alone mere nature
receive it; yet I think that our movement from one to the other is more
naturally described by us in the language of growth than in the language
of convulsion. The primal object of religion is to disclose to us this
perdurable basis of life, and foster our growth into communion with it.
And whatever its special, language and personal colour be--for all our
news of God comes to us through the consciousness of individual men, and
arrives tinctured by their feelings and beliefs--in the end it does