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
and of social effort: since it refers to the abiding Reality which alone
gives all these their meaning and worth, and which man, consciously or
unconsciously, must pursue.
And last, if we ask as a summing up of the whole matter: _Why_ man is
thus to seek the Eternal, through, behind and within the ever-fleeting?
The answer is that he cannot, as a matter of fact, help doing it sooner
or later: for his heart is never at rest, till it finds itself there.
But he often wastes a great deal of time before he realizes this. And
perhaps we may find the reason why man--each man--is thus pressed
towards some measure of union with Reality, in the fact that his
conscious will thus only becomes an agent of the veritable purposes of
life: of that Power which, in and through mankind, conserves and slowly
presses towards realization the noblest aspirations of each soul. This
power and push we may call if we like in the language of realism the
tendency of our space-time universe towards deity; or in the language of
religion, the working of the Holy Spirit. And since, so far as we know,
it is only in man that life becomes self-conscious, and ever more and
more self-conscious, with the deepening and widening of his love and his
thought; so it is only in man that it can dedicate the will and desire
which are life's central qualities to the furtherance of this Divine
creative aim.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 149: "The Mirror of Eternal Salvation," Cap. 7.]
[Footnote 150: A good general discussion in Tansley: "The New Psychology
and its Relation to Life," Caps. 19, 20.]
[Footnote 151: Aug. Conf., Bk. X, Cap. 27.]
[Footnote 152: Blake; "Jerusalem."]
[Footnote 153: "Social Psychology," Cap. i.]
[Footnote 154: "The Interior Castle": Sleuth Habitation, Cap. IV.]
[Footnote 155: "The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage," Bk. II, Cap.
44.]
[Footnote 156: Warren: "Buddhism in Translations," p. 28.]
PRINCIPAL WORKS USED OR CITED.
_S. Alexander_. Space, Time, and Deity. London, 1920.
_Blessed Angela of Foligno_. Book of Divine Consolations (New Mediaeval
Library). London, 1908.
_St. Thomas Aquinas_. Summa Contra Gentiles (Of God and His Creatures),
trans. by J. Rickaby, London, 1905.
_St. Augustine_. Confessions, trans. by Rev. C. Bigg. London, 1898.
_Venerable Augustine Baker_. Holy Wisdom, or Directions for the Prayer
of Contemplation. London, 1908.
_Charles Baudouin_. Suggestion et Auto-suggestion. Paris, 1920.
_Harold Begbie_. William Booth, Founder of the Salvation Army. London,
1920.
_William Blake_. Poetical Works, with Variorum Readings by J. Sampson,
Oxford, 1905.
--Jerusalem, edited by E.R.D. Maclagan and A.E.B. Russell. London, 1904.
_Jacob Boehme_. The Aurora, trans. by J. Sparrow, London, 1914.
--Six Theosophic Points, trans. by J.R. Earle, London, 1919.
--The Way to Christ. London, 1911.
_St. Bonaventura_. Opera Omnia. Paris, 1864-71.
_Bernard Bosanquet_. What Religion Is. London, 1920.
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