aling with the most subtle of realities and have only the help of
crude words, developed for other purposes than this. But surely we come
near to the truth, as history and experience show it to us, when we say
again that the spiritual life in all its manifestations from smallest
beginnings to unearthly triumph is simply the life that means God in all
His richness, immanent and transcendent: the whole response to the
Eternal and Abiding of which any one man is capable, expressed in and
through his this-world life. It requires then an objective vision or
certitude, something to aim at; and also a total integration of the
self, its dedication to that aim. Both terms, vision and response, are
essential to it.

This definition may seem at first sight rather dull. It suggests little
of that poignant and unearthly beauty, that heroism, that immense
attraction, which really belong to the spiritual life. Here indeed we
are dealing with poetry in action: and we need not words but music to
describe it as it really is. Yet all the forms, all the various beauties
and achievements of this life of the Spirit, can be resumed as the
reactions of different temperaments to the one abiding and inexhaustibly
satisfying Object of their love. It is the answer made by the whole
supple, plastic self, rational and instinctive, active and
contemplative, to any or all of those objective experiences of religion
which we considered in the first chapter; whether of an encompassing
and transcendent Reality, of a Divine Companionship or of Immanent
Spirit. Such a response we must believe to be itself divinely actuated.
Fully made, it is found on the one hand to call forth the most heroic,
most beautiful, most tender qualities in human nature; all that we call
holiness, the transfiguration of mere ethics by a supernatural
loveliness, breathing another air, satisfying another standard, than
those of the temporal world. And on the other hand, this response of the
self is repaid by a new sensitiveness and receptivity, a new influx of
power. To use theological language, will is answered by grace: and as
the will's dedication rises towards completeness the more fully does new
life flow in. Therefore it is plain that the smallest and humblest
beginning of such a life in ourselves--and this inquiry is useless
unless it be made to speak to our own condition--will entail not merely
an addition to life, but for us too a change in our whole scale of
values, a self