for a basis of religious belief which shall rest, not upon tradition
or external authority or historical evidence, but upon the
ascertainable facts of human experience. The craving for immediacy,
which we have seen to be characteristic of all mysticism, now takes
the form of a desire to establish the validity of the
God-consciousness as a normal part of the healthy inner life. We may
perhaps venture to predict that the Christian biologist of the
future will turn the Pauline Christology into his own dialect
somewhat after the following fashion:--"The function of religion in
the human race is closely analogous to, if not identical with, that
of instinct in the lower animals. Religion is the racial will to
live; not, however, to live anyhow and at all costs, but to live as
human beings, conforming as far as possible to the highest type of
humanity. Religion, therefore, acts as a higher instinct, inhibiting
all self-destroying and race-destroying impulses in the interest of
a larger self than the individual life." To turn this statement into
theological form it is only necessary to claim that the "perfect
man" which the religious instinct is trying to form is "the measure
of the stature of the fulness of Christ," that that perfect humanity
was once realised in the historical Christ, and that the higher
instinct within us--ourselves, yet not ourselves--which makes for
life and righteousness, and is the source of all the good that we
can think, say, or do, may (in virtue of that historical
incarnation) be justly called the indwelling Christ. This is all
that the Christian mystic needs.

Sect. 10. SPECIMENS OF MODERN MYSTICISM

I conclude this introductory essay with a few extracts from recent
American books on the psychology of religion. It is interesting to