we consider from this point of view the problems which are resumed under
the headings of prayer, contemplation, and grace. We shall find
ourselves compelled to examine the nature of meditation and
recollection, as spiritual persons have always practised them; and, to
give, if we can, a psychological account of many of their classic
conceptions and activities. We shall therefore be much concerned with
those experiences which are often called mystical, but which I prefer to
call in general contemplative and intuitive; because they extend, as we
shall find, without a break from the simplest type of mental prayer, the
most general apprehensions of the Spirit, to the most fully developed
examples of religious mono-ideism. To place all those intuitions and
perceptions of which God or His Kingdom are the objects in a class apart
from all other intuitions and perceptions, and call them "mystical," is
really to beg the question from the start. The psychic mechanisms
involved in them are seen in action in many other types of mental
activity; and will not, in my opinion, be understood until they are
removed from the category of the supernatural, and studied as the
movements of the one spirit of life--here directed towards a
transcendent objective. And further we must ever keep in mind, since we
are now dealing with specific spiritual experiences, deeply exploring
the contemplative soul, that though psychology can criticize these
experiences, and help us to separate the wheat from the chaff--can tell
us, too, a good deal about the machinery by which we lay hold of them,
and the best way to use it--it cannot explain the experiences, pronounce
upon their Object, or reduce that Object to its own terms.

We may some day have a valid psychology of religion, though we are far
from it yet: but when we do, it will only be true within its own system
of reference. It will deal with the fact of the spiritual life from one
side only. And as a discussion of the senses and their experience