Thus Gerard Hopkins :sx The warm breast , fount of creative and cherishing life , is turned earthwards :sx the bright wings , spread out upon another , a transcendent , free , and perfect order of existence , reflect the radiance of Eternity .sx Surely a wonderful image of the Divine double action , and the Divine double love .sx V .sx THE REVELATION OF SPIRIT .sx IF the first term of our inquiry , ` God is Spirit ' , requires of us the most awestruck and unearthly conception of God , and opens the door to the fullest supernaturalism , the second term , ` Heavenly Father ' , is found to bring Spirit within reach of sense ; the spaceless into space .sx It qualifies the dreadful vision of the numinous by the soul's own experience of intimate dependence on a creative and cherishing power .sx It guarantees the inexhaustibly deep and mysterious doctrines of Providence and Divine Love those dearest treasures of faith .sx It opens the door alike to mystical and to sacramental religion :sx the humble self-giving of God Present along the tortuous paths of the created mind , and through the consecration of homely created things .sx ` It is clear ' , says St. John of the Cross , ` that .sx God , in order to set a soul in movement , and raise .sx it from one extreme , the abjection of the creature , .sx to the opposite extreme , that is to the infinite height .sx of the divine union , must act gradually , gently , and .sx in accordance with the nature of the soul .sx Now .sx the ordinary mode of knowledge proper to the soul .sx requires the use of the forms and images of createdthings ; for we can know and savour nothing with-out the stimulation of the senses .sx Hence God , to raise the soul to supreme knowledge and do it with gentleness , must begin to touch her in her lowest extremity , that of the senses , in order to raise her gradually and in accordance with her proper nature to her other extremity that spiritual wisdom which is independent of the senses .sx .. God works man's perfection according to man's nature .sx He begins with that which is lowest and most external , and ends with that which is highest and most interior .sx ' In this great passage St. John is speaking of a far richer , more precise and more penetrating disclosure of Spirit , than that general discovery of God in Nature which is sometimes gratified with the name of Nature Mysticism .sx He is laying down a principle , at once metaphysical and psychological , by means of which we may hope to reduce to some kind of order the tangled witness of ` religious experience ' ; and sift out the facts which its phantasies veil and reveal .sx For now , having abandoned all demand for a clear-cut definition of the word ` Spirit ' , and accepted instead its concrete and mysterious presence and our own fragmentary , uneven experience and response , we are brought to a further problem How has man , a sense-conditioned creature committed to succession , come to be aware of this supersensual and unchanging Reality ?sx And we have already replied that this knowledge comes not by our own explorations but by the prevenient action and incitement of God-Spirit , by the entry .sx of the Spaceless into space in a broad sense , by revelation .sx Reality must stir and touch its half-made creature , before it can be desired .sx God must reach in to us , before we can reach out to Him .sx And St. John's doctrine gives us the path which we may expect that revelation to take .sx In order to move the human soul with gentleness , Spirit makes Its approach , in a way at once majestic and humble , through the ' forms and images ' of that sensible world to which we are adjusted and in which we are bathed .sx These forms , these creatures just because they possess their own finite independence and reality , because they are true creations and not dreams are capable of carrying the reality of the Infinite ; providing , as it were , points of insertion for the self-giving energies of the all-enfolding supernatural world .sx Without some admixture of sense , like dust in sunny air , we are , says St. John again , almost incapable of perceiving the spiritual light .sx And were it not for this stooping down of the Infinite to the finite , this mingling of Spirit with sense , the direct impact of the Absolute might well shatter us .sx ' It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God .sx ' Those veils and obscurities at which we sometimes cavil are the garments of mercy upon the Spirit of Holiness .sx Looking with reverence on the human scene , and seeking to realize our situation , conditioned by the senses and yet susceptible to the deep currents of the spiritual world , we begin to perceive how wide is the field within which this principle of Spirit'spenetration of our spirits by way of the objects of sense can interpret our baffling glimpses and experiences of Reality .sx In the light of this principle , it is easy to recognize in the most deeply valued practices and hallowed objects of organized religion , points of insertion through which the quickening action of the Spirit can reach the faithful and receptive soul .sx And though this may not ' explain ' the mysterious communications we call sacramental grace , at least we obtain a formula within which to place them .sx As a vast area of supernatural truth , still unexhausted by us , is condensed , focused , and flooded upon the natural world through the person of Christ so , limited incarnations of Spirit take place through the symbolic and sacramental acts of religion .sx Recejac's definition of mysticism as ' the tendency to approach the Absolute morally and by means of symbols ' told only half the truth .sx It is also through and in symbols , bridging the chasm between sense and spirit , that the Absolute without any reduction of an utter transcendence and other-ness makes Its merciful approach to the spirit of man .sx ' When that supernatural Light of which we speak ' , says St. John of the Cross , ' enters the soul in its simple purity , independent of all those intelligible things which are proportioned to our understanding , the understanding is not irradiated and sees nothing .sx ' Hence the wise tenacity with which historical Christianity has clung to liturgic and sacramental embodiments of the Holy , and surrounded them with mystery and awe , is justified .sx Hence too the inevitable impoverishment which follows their neglect or repudiation .sx How tiny , even at the best , these points of insertion must be , and how limited the communication in comparison with the Reality conveyed , will be apparent to all in whom arrogance has not reached the dimensions of disease .sx For they are adapted to the narrow capacity of the creature ; and the communication received , though its substance be always whole and unchanging , will vary in its richness according to the heart to which it comes .sx Christians must regard the historical Incarnation as the greatest of all such insertions of Spirit into history ; and the transfigured lives of the Saints as guaranteeing its continuance in the world .sx Jesus Himself is ' incarnate by the Spirit :sx a metaphysical truth to which we sometimes fail to give full weight , for indeed there lies behind it the full pressure of the supernatural world .sx In His earthly life we see Spirit's action , in and through a human personality entirely God-possessed ; the Absolute Life mingled with the sensible and contingent , and only in rare moments revealing Its presence and power .sx We see the rich and inexhaustible significance of actions and events which might never , without this relation-ship , have emerged from the flux of use and wont ; .sx but , seized upon as the stuff of revelation , now glow .sx and deepen like an opal , which rewards our steadfast .sx contemplation with new colour and new light .sx ` God the incomprehensible makes Himself comprenhensible in this humanity,' says Berulle , ` God the ineffable becomes audible in the voice of His Word incarnate , and God the invisible is seen , in the flesh which He has united with the very nature of His Eternity .sx ' And thus , the lowly birth , the call and preaching of a local prophet , His communion with God and compassionate ministry among men , His conflicts with ecclesiastical authority , each detail of His betrayal and death all this historical material , which is the substance of the plain narratives of the Synoptics , is lifted to a fresh order of significance .sx The events of Christ's life are well named ` mysteries ' for their meaning transcends the historical accidents and occasions which condition their outward form , and has an immortal relation with the interior life of men .sx There is a mounting revelation of the Spirit , in and through this uttered Thought , the incarnate Word .sx The point of insertion has behind it the wealth and pressure of the Infinite Life .sx So we should not accept the fragmentary narratives and simple insights of the New Testament writers as telling .sx all the truth ; or reject as unhistorical the discoveries and interpretations of the saints .sx Centuries of meditation have widened and deepened the channel of revelation .sx The procession of the Spirit takes place in the Eternal order ; and through Bethlehem and Calvary , Hermon and the Upper Room , a wealth of life and light which is not yet exhausted comes to wide-open , self-oblivious souls .sx ' All these events ' , says Berulle , ` took place in certain circumstances ; but they endure , and are .sx become present and perpetual , in another manner .sx They are past as regards their execution , but they are present as regards their power .sx .. the Spirit of God , whereby the Mystery was worked , is the abiding fact of which it is the outer vesture .sx His efficacy and power make the mystery operative in us , and He is ever living , actual , and present in it .sx This compels us to treat the things and mysteries of the Gospel , not as things past and dead , but as things living and present , and even eternal , from which we also must gather a present and eternal fruit .sx ' The principle here laid down one aspect of that great law of the creative penetration of Spirit into sense on which all Christian philosophy is built operates over the whole of the historical and institutional material of religion ; indeed , over its literary and artistic material as well .sx All this , used with simplicity and meekness , can become the medium of spiritual communications which may far transcend the insights or intentions of those by whom it was first devised .sx The simplest -facts of historical religion , or the commonplaces of devotional literature , subject to the penetrative action of Spirit , can thus acquire a transcendental reference ; and enter the sacramental economy .sx Not merely the common experience of a constant new discovery of deep meaning in familiar acts and words , but that large range of phenomena which we are inclined to set aside because of their comparative rarity , fall under the general method by which , as St. John says , God' sets a soul in movement ' towards that centre which is Himself .sx Here we get a clue and can give a meaning to those ' openings ' as the Quakers so excellently called them , well known to all who are accustomed to the meditative reading of Scripture and other spiritual books ; when our ' condition ' is directly met by way of words long familiar , but now suddenly lit up from within , transformed and enriched by the living Spirit which enters through this loophole our closely-shuttered minds .sx In such moments , a real communication of the Infinite to the finite takes place .sx ' There is in books ' , said the Divine voice to Thomas a Kempis , ' one voice and one letter that is read , but it informeth not all alike .sx For I am within secretly hidden in the letter , the Teacher of truth , the Searcher of man's heart .sx ' Few persons possessed of religious sensitiveness pass through life without experiencing such abrupt illuminations ; which , transcending any psychological explanation , must be reckoned however little we understand them among the mysterious facts of the spiritual life .sx And it is , I think , by an extension of this same principle that we arrive at the interpretation of the more abnormal forms of religious experience .sx All those psychic automatisms which are loosely described as ' mystical phenomena ' voices , visions , the ' sense of Presence ' , the profound mono-ideism of the contemplative are certainly susceptible of psychological explanation ; and may witness to nothing more than the vigour of the subject's own fantasy-life .sx