is believed to fall upon us in an external, miraculous manner; and finally it often becomes an object of wordy dispute and strife.  Certain periods in the history of the Christian Church give abundant evidence of the truth of this statement.  Eucken points out in his Problem of Human Life how barren in creative power, for instance, was the fourth century.  Why?  An interval of nearly three centuries had passed away since the Master and his followers had proclaimed truths and experiences which were the burning convictions of their deepest being.  Gradually, and often unconsciously, men glided down an inclined plane, until at last the spiritual nucleus of Christianity had largely disappeared and little more than the husks remained.  At the close of such intervals religion becomes a number of conflicting intellectual theories, and the worst passions are called to its support.  Dogmatism 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 immanent.