ve; nor, again, if the deepest religious consciousness tends
usually to conceive God's outward action, if future, then as proximate,
and, if present, then as strictly instantaneous. For God in Himself is
indeed Simultaneous; and if we try to picture Simultaneity by means of
temporal images at all, then the instant, and not any period long or
short, is certainly nearest to the truth--as regards the form and
vehicle of the experience.

The greater acts of Divine Condescension and Self-Revelation, our
Religious _Accessions_, have mostly occurred at considerable intervals,
each from the other, in our human history. After they have actually
occurred, these several acts can be compared and arranged, according to
their chief characteristics, and even in a series of (upon the whole)
growing content and worth--hence the Science of Religion. Yet such
Science gives us no power to produce, or even to foresee, any further
acts. These great Accessions of Spiritual Knowledge and Experience are
not the simple result of the conditions obtaining previously in the
other levels of life, or even in that of religion itself; they often
much anticipate, they sometimes greatly lag behind, the rise or decline
of the other kinds of life. And where (as with the great Jewish
Prophets, and, in some degree, with John the Baptist and Our Lord) these
Accessions do occur at times of national stress, these several crises
are, at most, the occasion for the demand, not the cause of the supply.

The mostly long gaps between these Accessions have been more or less
filled up, amongst the peoples concerned, by varyingly vigorous and
valuable attempts to articulate and systematize, to apply in practice,
and rightly to place (within the other ranges of man's total life) these
great, closely-packed masses of spiritual fact; or to elude, to deflect,
or directly to combat them, or some of their interpretations or
applications. Now fairly steady improvement is possible, desirable, and
largely actual, in the critical sifting and appraisement, as to the
dates and the actual reality, of the historical documents and details of
these Accessions; in the philosophical articulation of their doctrinal
and evidential content; in the finer understanding and wider application
of their ethical demands; and in the greater adequacy (both as to
firmness and comprehensiveness) of the institutional organs and
incorporations special to these same Accessions. All this can and does
pro