CHAPTER I

THE CHARACTERS OF SPIRITUAL LIFE


This book has been called "The Life of the Spirit and the Life of
To-day" in order to emphasize as much as possible the practical,
here-and-now nature of its subject; and specially to combat the idea
that the spiritual life--or the mystic life, as its more intense
manifestations are sometimes called--is to be regarded as primarily a
matter of history. It is not. It is a matter of biology. Though we
cannot disregard history in our study of it, that history will only be
valuable to us in so far as we keep tight hold on its direct connection
with the present, its immediate bearing on our own lives: and this we
shall do only in so far as we realize the unity of all the higher
experiences of the race. In fact, were I called upon to choose a motto
which should express the central notion of these chapters, that motto
would be--"There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit." This
declaration I would interpret in the widest possible sense; as
suggesting the underlying harmony and single inspiration of all man's
various and apparently conflicting expressions of his instinct for
fullness of life. For we shall not be able to make order, in any hopeful
sense, of the tangle of material which is before us, until we have
subdued it to this ruling thought: seen one transcendent Object towards
which all our twisting pathways run, and one impulsion pressing us
towards it.

As psychology is now teaching us to find, at all levels of our craving,