The greatest and most real of living writers on this subject, Baron von Huegel, has given us another definition of the personal spiritual life which may fruitfully be compared with this.  It must and shall, he says, exhibit rightful contact with and renunciation of the Particular and Fleeting; and with this ever seeks and finds the Eternal—­deepening and incarnating within its own experience this “transcendent Otherness."[129] Nothing which we are likely to achieve can go beyond this profound saying.  We see how many rich elements are contained in it:  effort and growth, a temper both social and ascetic, a demand for and a receiving of power.  True, to some extent it restates the position at which we arrived in the first chapter:  but we now wish to examine more thoroughly into that position and discover its practical applications.  Let us then begin by unpacking it, and examining its chief characters one by one.

If we do this, we find that it demands of us:—­(1) Rightful contact with the Particular and Fleeting.  That is, a willing acceptance of all this-world tasks, obligations, relations, and joys; in fact, the Active Life of Becoming in its completeness.

(2) But also, a certain renunciation of that Particular and Fleeting.  A refusal to get everything out of it that we can for ourselves, to be possessive, or attribute to it absolute worth.  This involves a sense of detachment or asceticism; of further destiny and obligation for the soul than complete earthly happiness or here-and-now success.

(3) And with this ever—­not merely in hours of devotion—­to seek and find the Eternal; penetrating our wholesome this-world action through and through with the very spirit of contemplation.

(4) Thus deepening and incarnating—­bringing in, giving body to, and in some sense exhibiting by means of our own growing and changing experience—­that transcendent Otherness, the fact of the Life of the Spirit in the here-and-now.

The full life of the Spirit, then, is once more declared to be active, contemplative, ascetic and apostolic; though nowadays we express these abiding human dispositions in other and less formidable terms.  If we translate them as work, prayer, self-discipline and social service they do not look quite so bad.  But even so, what a tremendous programme to put before the ordinary human creature, and how difficult it looks when thus arranged!  That balance to be discovered and held between due contact with this present living world of time, and due renunciation of it.  That continual penetration of the time-world with the spirit of Eternity.