Within the Jewish world, we get much of this element at its noblest and at its worst, in the true and false Prophets respectively; then among the Essenes, for the times between the Maccabean resistance and the revolt of Bar Cochba; and later on in the Kabbala. The Mohammedans still furnish the example of the Sufi-movement. The Classical Heathen world produced the Neo-Platonist and the Mithraic movements; and we can still study, as a living thing, the Buddhist Mysticism of Thibet.
We have then, here too, something thoroughly elemental, which requires both persistent operative recognition and a continuous and profound purification and supplementation by becoming incorporated within a large living system of all the fundamental forces of the soul, each operating and operated upon according to the intrinsic nature and legitimate range of each.
2. Each element double; endless combinations and conflicts.
We have also found that these three forces and elements are each double, and that collisions, but also most fruitful interactions, can and do obtain between even these yoke-fellows: between Institutionalise and History,—the Present and the Past, a direct Sense-Impression and Picture and a Memory; between Criticism and Construction,—Analysis and acuteness of mind, and Synthesis and richness and balance of imagination, head, heart, and will; and between Mysticism and Action, as respectively Intuitive and quiescent and Volitional and effortful.
And both the three forces and elements as a whole, and the single members of each pair, can and do appear in every possible variety of combination with, and of opposition against, the others, although there is a special affinity between the Critical-Speculative and the Intuitive-Volitional pairs (in combination against the Sense-and-Memory pair); between the Sense-and-Memory pair and the single member of Action; and between the single members of Speculation and of Intuition. Yet, ultimately, not any one pair or member can bear its fullest fruit, without the aid of all the others; and there is not one that, in actual human nature, does not tend to emasculate, or to oust as much as possible from the soul, the other pairs or single members.
3. Our entire religious activity but one element of our complete spirit-life.
And we have noted further, how even the fullest development in any one soul of all these three couples of specifically religious activities—even supposing that they could be developed to their fullest, without any participation in and conflict with other degrees and kinds of life and reality—do not, by any means, exhaust the range of even the simplest soul’s actual energizings.
(1) For over and beyond the specifically religious life—though this, where genuine, is ever the deepest, the central life—every soul lives, and has to live, various other lives. And indeed—and this is the point which specially concerns religion—the soul cannot attain to its fullest possible spiritual development, without the vigorous specific action and differentiation of forces and functions of a not directly religious character, which will have to energize, each according to its own intrinsic nature, within the ever ampler, and ever more closely-knit, organization of the complete life of the soul.
(2) And within this complete life, the three pairs of religious forces and elements each possess their own special affinities and antipathies for certain of the forces and elements which constitute the other, less central organizations of man’s marvellously rich activity. The Historical-Institutional element of Religion has necessarily a special affinity for, and borrows much of its form from, social, legal, political history and institutions of a general kind. The Critical-Speculative element of religion is necessarily cognate to, and in a state of interchange with, the general historical criticism and philosophical insight attained during the ages and amongst the races in which any particular religion is intellectually systematized. And the Mystical-Operative element is necessarily influenced by, and largely utilizes the general emotive and volitional gifts and habits, peculiar to the various ages and peoples within which this double religious element is in operation.
(3) It is thus abundantly clear how greatly a work so manifold in its means, and so harmonious in its end, requires, if it is to come to a considerable degree of realization, that single souls, and single classes and types of souls, should have around them a large and varied Historical and Institutional, a Social life both of a specifically religious and of a general kind, and that, within this large ambit of the actualized religion of others and of the still largely potential religion of their own souls, they shall develop and be helped to realize their own deepest spiritual capacities and attrait. They will have to develop these special capabilities to the utmost degree compatible with some practice of the other chief elements of religion, with a continuous respect for and belief in the necessity of the other types of soul, and with a profound belief in, and love of, the full, organized community of all devoted souls, which builds up, and is built up by, all this variety in unity. The Kingdom of God, the Church, will thus be more and more found and made to be the means of an ever more distinct articulation, within an ever more fruitful interaction, of the various attraits, gifts, vocations, and types of souls which constitute its society. And these souls in return will, precisely by this their articulation within this ampler system, bring to this society an ever richer content of variety in harmony, of action and warfare within an ever deeper fruitfulness and peace.