g values; yet, placed as we are in the stream of
succession, part of the stuff of a changing world and linked at every
point with it, our apprehensions of this life of spirit, the symbols we
use to describe it--and we must use symbols--must inevitably change too.
Therefore from time to time some restatement becomes imperative, if
actuality is not to be lost. Whatever God meant man to do or to be, the
whole universe assures us that He did not mean him to stand still. Such
a restatement, then, may reasonably be called a truly religious work;
and I believe that it is indeed one of the chief works to which religion
must find itself committed in the near future. Hence my main object In
this book is to recommend the consideration of this enduring fact of the
life of the Spirit and what it can mean to us, from various points of
view; thus helping to prepare the ground for that synthesis which we may
not yet be able to achieve, but towards which we ought to look. It is
from this stand-point, and with this object of examining what we have,
of sorting out if we can the permanent from the transitory, of noticing
lacks and bridging cleavages, that we shall consider in turn the
testimony of history, the position in respect of psychology, and the
institutional personal and social aspects of the spiritual life.

In such a restatement, such a reference back to actual man, here at the
present day as we have him--such a demand for a spiritual interpretation
of the universe, which will allow us to fit in all his many-levelled
experiences--I believe we have the way of approach to which religion
to-day must look as its best hope. Thus only can we conquer that
museum-like atmosphere of much traditional piety which--agreeable as it
may be to the historic or aesthetic sense--makes it so unreal to our
workers, no less than to our students. Such a method, too, will mean the
tightening of that alliance between philosophy and psychology which is
already a marked character of contemporary thought.

And note that, working on this basis, we need not in order to find room
for the facts commit ourselves to the harsh dualism, the opposition
between nature and spirit, which is characteristic of some earlier forms
of Christian thought. In this dualism, too, we find simply an effort to
describe felt experience. It is an expression of the fact, so strongly
and deeply felt by the richest natures, that there _is_ an utter
difference in kind between the natura