and relative sense. The subjective element,
all that the psychologist means by apperception, must enter in, and
control it. Nevertheless, they refer to man's communion with an
independent objective Reality. This experience is more real and
concrete, therefore more important, than any of the systems by which
theology seeks to explain it. We may then take it, without prejudice to
any special belief, that the spiritual life we wish to study is _one
life_; based on experience of one Reality, and manifested in the
diversity of gifts and graces which men have been willing to call true,
holy, beautiful and good. For the moment at least we may accept the
definition of it given by Dr. Bosanquet, as "oneness with the Supreme
Good in every facet of the heart and will."[6] And since without
derogation of its transcendent character, its vigour, wonder and worth,
it is in human experience rather than in speculation that we are bound
to seek it, we shall look first at the forms taken by man's intuition of
Eternity, the life to which it seems to call him; and next at the actual
appearance of this life in history. Then at the psychological machinery
by which we may lay hold of it, the contributions which religious
institutions make to its realization; and last, turning our backs on
these partial explorations of the living Whole, seek if we can to seize
something of its inwardness as it appears to the individual, the way in
which education may best prepare its fulfilment, and the part it must
play in the social group.

We begin therefore at the starting point of this life of Spirit: in
man's vague, fluctuating, yet persistent apprehension of an enduring and
transcendent reality--his instinct for God. The characteristic forms
taken by this instinct are simple and fairly well known. Complication
only comes in with the interpretation we put on them.

By three main ways we tend to realize our limited personal relations
with that transcendent Other which we call divine, eternal or real; and
these, appearing perpetually in the vast literature of religion, might
be illustrated from all places and all times.

First, there is the profound sense of security: of being safely held in
a cosmos of which, despite all contrary appearance, peace is the very
heart, and which is not inimical to our true interests. For those whose
religious experience takes this form, God is the Ground of the soul, the
Unmoved, our Very Rest; statements which meet us aga