and intolerance prevail, and a blight comes over the choicest potencies
of the soul. All this happens because certain great events and
experiences of the past are conceived of as marking a terminus in the
history of the moral and spiritual evolution of the world. The [p.78]
soul is not stirred to its depth to preserve such experiences and, if
possible, enhance them. Thus the world leaves such a rich spiritual
content largely behind itself; and when this happens, it becomes a
matter of the greatest difficulty to recover it. And even when it is
recovered, something of infinite value has been for ever lost. The
present moment of the soul has to live on itself; and such a life
remains alien to depths of reality which have been plumbed by the great
personalities of history in the past. It is a want of conviction in
truth and reality that makes us seek finality in the past. It may be
that the highest personalities of our day are not able to scale such
spiritual heights as were scaled by the Christians of the primitive
Church; but unless they believe that the same power is present in their
souls they will never have courage even to make the attempt. It is a
vision of the nature of the reality which was climbed by the
personalities of the past, coupled with the consciousness of the same
spiritual power in the present, that will enable Christianity to be
lived on such a "grand scale" in the present and the future. The
spiritual experiences of the past have become over-individual and
over-historical norms for our lives; but such norms are no more than
ideas until the will enters into a relation with them. When this
happens, the individual does not only observe a goal in the distance but
also starts to move towards such [p.79] a goal with the whole spiritual
energy of his nature. And every individual who moves in the direction of
such norms brings some contribution of value from the present to be
added to the norms of the past. The spiritual life is thus individual
and over-individual, historical and over-historical, transcendent and