Now let us look at the emergence of this life which we have been considering, and at the typical path which it will or may follow, in an ordinary man or woman of our own day.  Not a saint or genius, reaching heroic levels; but a member of that solid wholesome spiritual population which ought to fill the streets of the City of God.  We noticed when we were studying its appearance in history, that often this life begins in a sort of restlessness, a feeling that there is something more in existence, some absolute meaning, some more searching obligation, that we have not reached.  This dissatisfaction, this uncertainty and hunger, may show itself in many different forms.  It may speak first to the intellect, to the moral nature, to the social conscience, even to the artistic faculty; or, directly, to the heart.  Anyhow, its abiding quality is a sense of contraction, of limitation; a feeling of something more that we could stretch out to, and achieve, and be.  Its impulsion is always in one direction; to a finding of some wider and more enduring reality, some objective for the self’s life and love.  It is a seeking of the Eternal, in some form.  I allow that thanks to the fog in which we live muffled, such a first seeking, and above all such a finding of the Eternal is not for us a very easy thing.  The sense of quest, of disillusion, of something lacking, is more common among modern men than its resolution in discovery.  Nevertheless the quest does mean that there is a solution:  and that those who are persevering must find it in the end.  The world into which our desire is truly turned, is somehow revealed to us.  The revelation, always partial and relative, is of course conditioned by our capacity, the character of our longing and the experiences of our past.  In spiritual matters we behold that which we are:  here following, on higher levels, the laws which govern aesthetic apprehension.

So, dissatisfied with its world-view and realizing that it is incomplete, the self seeks at first hand, though not always with clear consciousness of its nature, the Reality which is the object of religion.  When it finds this Reality, the discovery, however partial, is for it the overwhelming revelation of an objective Fact; and it is swept by a love and awe which it did not know itself to possess.  And now it sees; dimly, yet in a sufficiently disconcerting way, the Pattern in the Mount; the rich complex of existence as it were transmuted, full of charity and beauty, governed by another series of adjustments.  Life looks different to it.  As Fox said, “Creation gives out another smell than before."[144] There is only one thing more disconcerting than this, and that is seeing the pattern actualized in a fellow human being:  living face to face with human sanctity, in its great simplicity and supernatural love, joy, peace.  For, when we glimpse Eternal Beauty in the universe, we can say with the hero of “Callista,” “It is beyond me!” But, when we see it transfiguring human character, we know that it is not beyond the power of the race.  It is here, to be had.  Its existence as a form of life creates a standard, and lays an obligation on us all.