The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-dayUnderhill, Evelyn
Religion
The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day
Underhill, Evelyn
Spiritual life
We need not claim that those men and women who have most fully realized,
and so at first hand have described to us, this life of the Spirit, have
neither discerned or communicated the ultimate truth of things; nor need
we claim that the symbols they use have intrinsic value, beyond the
poetic power of suggesting to us the quality and wonder of their
transfigured lives. Still less must we claim this discovery as the
monopoly of any one system of religion. But we can and ought to claim,
that no system shall be held satisfactory which does not find a place
for it: and that only in so far as we at least apprehend and respond to
the world's spiritual aspect, do we approach the full stature of
humanity. Psychologists at present are much concerned to entreat us to
"face reality," discarding idealism along with the other phantasies that
haunt the race. Yet this facing of reality can hardly be complete if we
do not face the facts of the spiritual life. Certainly we shall find it
most difficult to interpret these facts; they are confused, and more
than one reading of them is possible. But still we cannot leave them out
and claim to have "faced reality."
Hoeffding goes so far as to say that any real religion implies and must
give us a world-view.[30] And I think it is true that any vividly lived
spiritual life must, as soon as it passes beyond the level of mere
feeling and involves reflection, involve too some more or less
articulated conception of the spiritual universe, in harmony with which
that life is to be lived. This may be given to us by authority, in the
form of creed: but if we do not thus receive it, we are committed to the
building of our own City of God. And to-day, that world-view, that
spiritual landscape, must harmonize--if it is needed to help our
living--with the outlook, the cosmic map, of the ordinary man. If it be
adequate, it will inevitably transcend this; but must not be in hopeless
conflict with it. The stretched-out, graded, striving world of
biological evolution, the many-faced universe of the physical
relativist, the space-time manifold of realist philosophy--these great
constructions of human thought, so often ignored by the religious mind,
must on the contrary be grasped, and accommodated to the world-view
which centres on the God known in religious experience. They are true
within their own systems of reference; and the soul demands a synthesis
wide enough to contain them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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