'SPIRIT' and 'spiritual' are words which are constantly used and easily taken for granted by all writers upon religion more constantly and easily, perhaps, than any of the other terms
in the mysterious currency of faith. Many who
hesitate at the name of God, find no difficulty in
assuming the existence of Spirit. Yet as a matter
of fact, there are few terms in the vocabulary of
religion of which the true character and value is so
difficult to capture and define. This difficulty is
not peculiar to the philosophic pietist, recommending
'absolute spiritual values' which are as
elusive as vitamins, and equally essential to life.
It is already present in those New Testament documents from which the Christian theology of spirit
is derived. These documents say much of that
which Spirit does and demands: little or nothing
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of that which Spirit is. They leave us still facing
the question: what is Spirit? and the more we
look at this question, the more we realize that we
cannot answer it.
'Spirit'—a word admittedly symbolic, and more
suggestive than precise—does stand for something
which is veritably known by us,
'dimly yet vividly'
as Von Hügel says; something most real and fundamental to our human world, permeating all deep
human experience though always lying just beyond
the range of conceptual thought. Our experience
of this
'something' may be slight and fleeting, or
profound and transforming. But it is always the
experience of a living reality; an unseen energy
other than ourselves, and having in its own right a
range of being and of significance unconditioned by
the narrow human world. This reality is not, like
sunlight, susceptible of analysis. Its character is
never truly clear to the logical levels of the mind.
It is, as the Victorines declared,
'beyond reason'
though not 'against reason'. It is known, therefore,
more richly by intuition than it can ever be
by intellect; and, for reasons which will afterwards
appear, most richly and steadily by those who
accept, in some way or degree, the special disciplines
of the religious life. Indeed it seems that only a
life which has been slowly cleansed by the penetrating action of much prayer, can develop at all
fully that peculiar sensitiveness in which Spirit is
truly known, even though never understood. All
the works which really tell us something about it,
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and rouse our dull souls to a sense of its reality,
come from those whose lives have been re-ordered
in this sense. Their writings, so quiet, nourishing
and humble, stand in sharp contrast to the dry,
assured, and superficial cleverness of those who
pronounce upon
'spiritual experience' from without.
All the studies of mystical psychology ever written
will give us less information here than one encounter
with a contemplative saint.
And this alone enlightens us as to the first character
of the terms 'Spirit' and 'spiritual life'.
Their reference is to a rich and concrete reality, a
genuine existence which is only truly known by
contact, and only fully known by self-mergence;
that substantial Being we call eternal, by contrast
with the time-series in which our natural lives are
immersed. For it is the special function of prayer to
turn the self away from the time-series, and towards
the eternal order; away from the apparent, and
towards the significant; away from succession, and
towards adoration and adherence. Prayer opens
the doors of the psyche to the invasion of another
order, which shall at its full term transform the very
quality of our existence. And Spirit, in its most
general sense, is our name for that world, life, Being,
which is then apprehended by us ; and for that
quality in ourselves which is capable of such apprehension and response. Moreover, this sacred category,
lying behind the native land of the intelligence,
is not to be thought of lightly, vaguely, or
coldly, as mere material for academic speculation.
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We do not mean by it some tenuous region or plane of being to which physical considerations cannot
apply. The whole witness of religion suggests that
it is alive with an awful splendour, a range of personal action, which extends from the most tender and
intimate workings on the individual soul, to the
inconceivable energies and secret movements which
can sometimes be detected behind the pageant of
the visible world.
For all this, we must acknowledge that the word
'Spirit'—even though it carries the suggestions of
an invisible and unbounded energy, a wind blowing
where it listeth, a breath and life—is far too vague
and general to be adequate. It is allusive not
descriptive; and will never convey to those who
have not known them, the vivid realities of our
supersensual experience. When we look back into
its origins—the strange word Ruach of the Old
Testament, the Pneuma of the New—we realize
that these terms stand for man’s fundamental but
ineffable consciousness of the Unearthly; and that
the symbols which he uses to convey that consciousness derive their value, not from any true
approximation to the experience—which always slips
through the meshes of the mind—but from the
fact that they have become charged with a certain
quality of suggestion which can stir our latent
sense of
'otherness'. They are essentially musical
and poetic; crystallize the intuition of an unseen
Somewhat, unspeakable in its transcendence, yet
giving all its significance to the activities of the seen.
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As Otto has pointed out, this knowledge of Spirit
is still tentative and unformed in the Old Testament.
The alternate movements of love and fear which
stir those sensitive to its pressure have something
of the august simplicity of primitive art. Its transforming, saving,
'supernaturalizing'
character, the
immense possibilities that wait on its invasion of
human life, are not yet understood: still less its
metaphysical implications. It is known only in
the rare and vivid experiences of the prophetic
consciousness—those strange calls and overwhelming
intuitions, in which the soul becomes aware of the presence and direct demand of God-Spirit. Yet even
these embryonic perceptions of a living and acting
Reality already turn the mind to a mysterious region, entirely transcending us yet intimately present with
and through us. They assert the presence of a
world and an energetic power over against us; the
scene of secret experience, the spring of secret
action, and as we grow up in that world and that
action the occasion of great suffering and great
joy.
This, and much more, is involved and suggested
by the strange word 'Spirit'; even as used in the
most general sense. And within this general sense
it gives us, as we explore it, many grades and
depths of reality; not easily to be harmonized
within our limited span. At one end of the scale,
it points with awe towards the nature of Absolute
Being; in so far as Absolute Being is apprehended
by us.
'God is Spirit.’ At the other end, it is
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our best word for a certain fundamental essence or
quality we divine in ourselves, the ground of our
being, wherein our reality consists: a quality which
confers on us a certain kinship with Absolute Being,
and gives us a 'capacity for God'. This element
of our many-levelled and unstable nature, emerging
and becoming dominant, can transform us:
'that
which is born of the Spirit, is spirit.’
Thus, whether we look at it from the objective or
subjective point of view, this word Spirit is our
label for the fundamental religious category. It
stands for all we know or suspect of the supersensual, the non-successive; and the range of experience
and belief lying between its two extremes, divine
and human, is the field not only of theology but of
all personal religion. And as we mature and life
becomes more transparent to us at least in hours
of recollection and peace we find here the source
of those mysterious movements, those hidden
currents, by which human destinies are controlled.
Yet even so this term 'Spirit' alone is not enough
for religion; though it may easily be enough for
philosophy. For religion is concerned, not merely
with the non-extended and the supersensuous, but
with the Holy. We may be sure that vast regions
of existence lie beyond our sensory range; and that
the world invisible includes grades and kinds of
being of which we are unable to conceive. But
religion as such is not concerned with the totality
of the mysterious. It loses its character and squanders its strength, when it leaves the strait way to
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God for these by-path meadows. Its business is
only with the Holy; with the relationship between
man, the derived, imperfect and embodied spirit,
and the perfect, spaceless Spirit of all spirits—God.
It affirms His living sanctity, His individual action,
His overwhelming attraction and demand: and the
nothingness of the soul, at least as regards its
upward reaches, without that action—its fulfilment
in the response to that attraction and demand.
Therefore any attempt to study the
'spiritual life'
of man must begin here; with the fluid concept
under which he tries to express what he knows of
the peculiar quality of that life, and its relation to
its source and goal.
