rce of religion must do. _He_ is striving to find a
foundation-principle for the spiritual life which shall not be capricious
or sporadic, and which shall not be confined to one aspect of the inner
self, but which shall burn on as a steady illumination in the soul and be
the basis of all moral activity and all spiritual development. He finds
this principle, as we have seen, in the Word of God, which is a divine
reality, an eternal and self-existent activity, opening upward into all
the resources of God, and at the same time forming the fundamental nature
and ground-structure of the soul. A person may live--many persons do--in
the outer region of the self, using the natural instincts with which he
is supplied, pursuing the goals of life which appeal to common sense and
steering the earthly course by custom and by reason, but it is always
possible to have a wider range of experience, to live in deeper currents,
and to draw upon a _profounder source of insight_. This deeper
experience--which is the basis of Franck's mysticism and, for him, the
very heart of any genuine religion--consists of a personal discovery of
this eternal Word of God within and an irradiation of the whole being
through the co-operation of the will with it. The will is king in
man,[21] and can open or shut the gate which leads to life. It can make
its world good or it {57} can make it evil; just as out of one and the
same flower the bee gets honey and the spider poison.[22] It can swing
over its allegiance to God the Spirit of truth, or to the god of the
world who is anti-Christ.

This experience of the Word of God which is thus brought about by the
will of man--by an innermost personal choice--affects, Franck insists,
all the faculties of the inner life. Reason now becomes illumined with a
Light which it never had until the gate into its deeper region was
opened. Now, through co-operation with the Spirit of God, reason becomes
capable of higher processes, and can deal with divine things because it
has actual _data_ to work upon. The emotions, too, are no longer blind
and instinctive, they no longer carry the will whither it would not.
They are now the overflow of an inner experience which is too rich and
full for expression,[23] which transcends the intellectual apprehension
of it, but they are spiritualized and controlled from within. The moral
life is especially heightened, and this is for Franck one of the main
evidences that a divine sou