hus carrying through
the principle on which we are working, that of interpreting the abiding
facts of the spiritual life, so far as we can, in the language of the
present day.

First, then, I propose to consider the analysis of mind, and what It has
to tell us about the nature of Sin, of Salvation, of Conversion; what
light it casts on the process of purgation or self-purification which is
demanded by all religions of the Spirit; what are the respective parts
played by reason and instinct in the process of regeneration; and the
importance for religious experience of the phenomena of apperception.

We need not at this point consider again all that we mean by the life of
the Spirit. We have already considered it as it appears in history--its
inexhaustible variety, its power, nobility, and grace. We need only to
remind ourselves that what we have got to find room for in our
psychological scheme is literally, a changed and enhanced life; a life
which, immersed in the stream of history, is yet poised on the eternal
world. This life involves a complete re-direction of our desires and
impulses, a transfiguration of character; and often, too, a sense of
subjugation to superior guidance, of an access of impersonal strength,
so overwhelming as to give many of its activities an inspirational or
automatic character. We found that this life was marked by a rhythmic
alternation between receptivity and activity, more complete and
purposeful than the rhythm of work and rest which conditions, or should
condition, the healthy life of sense. This re-direction and
transfiguration, this removal to a higher term of our mental rhythm, are
of course psychic phenomena; using this word in a broad sense, without
prejudice to the discrimination of any one aspect of it as spiritual.
All that we mean at the moment is, that the change which brings in the
spiritual life is a change in the mind and heart of man, working in the
stuff of our common human nature, and involving all that the modern
psychologist means by the word psyche.

We begin therefore with the nature of the psyche as this modern,
growing, changing psychology conceives it; for this is the raw material
of regenerate man. If we exclude those merely degraded and pathological
theories which have resulted from too exclusive a study of degenerate
minds, we find that the current conception of the psyche--by which of
course I do not mean the classic conceptions of Ward or even William
James-