[p.164] We have already noticed how, on lower levels, spiritual life was
even there interpreted by its _norms_, and not by its connections with
what was _below itself_. The disappearance of miracle in religion is an
indispensable stage which must be passed over. It is necessary only on a
mid-level of religion, and has really been far more of the nature of a
symbol than of a fact. It is at our peril that in religion we give up
such a symbol until a more "inward wonder" has happened within our own
soul. When the self-subsistence of the spiritual life and the reality of
the norms of the over-world, now all united in God, are experienced, all
miraculous manifestations of the Divine, imaginary or real, are
relegated to a secondary place. They all belong to a point which the man
has passed; they are milestones to which he can never return. "An evil
and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign
be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet." As Eucken points out,
"This is no other than the sign of spiritual power and of a Divine
message and greatness." The movement from signs and miracles is a
movement from the outward to the inward, from percept to spirituality;
and the essence of religion, as a reality in itself and as an experience
of the soul, is to be found by taking such a step. The centre of gravity
of life has now been shifted from the outward to the inward. To
accomplish this means nothing less than a [p.165] struggle for _the
governing centre of life_. Unless we succeed in this struggle, the inner
life will reach no independence and subsistence of its own. Even when
the struggle succeeds in gaining its longed-for depth, it has not
removed for once and for all the contradictions from without and within.
Difficulties, from the lower side, will accompany the spiritual life in
its higher evolution, but once it has become conscious of its own Divine
nature and certainty it will gain sufficiently in content and power to
relegate them all to the periphery. Something has happened within the
soul which can never be obliterated. As Eucken says: "The contradiction