SO
wide and elastic a doctrine of Spirit as that
which seems to emerge from these considerations
is congenial enough to modern minds;
which love to sweep a large area of experience and
thought within the hospitable frontiers of a single
definition, and are more concerned with breadth
than depth. But if we left the matter here, unbalanced
by its completing opposite, we should fail
to account for all the most profound and most
subtle experiences of men. There is little to distinguish
such a conception of the Spirit from a
general doctrine of the immanence of God; and
this easy and deceptive simplification would slur for
us some of the most significant and necessary outlines
drawn by religion. Those who give it unconditioned
adherence are already setting their faces
towards quietism, and away from the energy of
adoration: towards pantheism, and away from the
awful distinctness of God.
Certainly we may speak, as the mystics often do,
of the Ocean of God-Spirit: that 'Sea Pacific'
of the Divine, bathing and penetrating all life, in
which the soul in certain states seems to be sunk,
page 15
losing all separate action in those peaceful and
powerful tides. But so doing we must keep steadily
in mind the fact that this image merely describes
one aspect, one phase most deep and true indeed,
yet not perhaps the most important for us in our
rich but never perfect experience of an infinite
Reality that transcends the totality of our experiences,
conceptions and beliefs. The most marked
character of all Biblical references to the Spirit is
by no means the sense of an unbounded Life
'in
whom we live and move and have our being' a
conception, of course, which is taken from a Pagan source. It is true that the Divine Action fills the
universe and that the most free and vigorous of
created spirits is but a darting shrimp in that
unsounded sea. But the great Biblical writers owe
their power to the fact that they knew deeper
levels of spiritual experience than this. The compensating
revelations of a terrible holiness and a
profound tenderness, which gradually emerge in the
Old Testament and are fully declared in the New,
require as their background something very different
from a merely immanental religious philosophy.
For the men of the Bible the Spirit is never fully
here; a calm, enveloping Presence like the Plotinian/psyche, penetrating the human world. Their emphasis is on its distinctness.
Veni, Sancte Spiritus
It is wholly other; the Object, not of philosophic
speculation, but of direct and awe-struck experience.
page 16
We are here in the presence of that fundamental
dualism, which lies at the very heart of human
religion.
To 'receive the Spirit'
then, is not merely to
open our eyes or even our souls on our real situation,
penetrated and sustained as we are by the Being of
God. It means a fresh situation, in which the first
movement comes from the hidden world over against
us; the passive reception of a more abundant life,
which is never to be won by the creature's deliberate
efforts; the prophetic
'gift'
of Spirit; the crucial
Pauline change from psyche to pneuma. Mild
notions of a general immanence of Spirit must give
way before that awe-struck sense of imminence
which is the characteristic note of the Biblical
doctrine of God. There is constantly implied in
the religious outlook of the Old and New Testament
writers, the expected invasion of another order over
against the historical and human. Here, Spirit
always represents the unconditioned action, the
awful intervention of the very Life of God; at once
a living spring and a devouring fire. The world of
the Bible is not wholly built up by the quiet action
of aqueous deposits. Its various structure witnesses
to volcanic periods; when another order intervenes,
with power to compel and transform.
'The Holy Spirit shall come on thee and the
power of the most High overshadow thee. . . .
Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit ... He
shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit. . . . Jesus
returned in the power of the Spirit. . . . Unto him
page 17
that blasphemeth against the Holy Spirit it shall not
be forgiven. ... He breathed on them and said,
Receive ye the Holy Spirit. ... Ye shall receive
power after that the Holy Spirit is come upon
you. ... As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit
fell on them. . . . Christ, through the eternal
Spirit, offered himself without spot to God. . . .
Resist not the Spirit. ... Ye are sealed unto the
Holy Spirit. ... An habitation of God through
the Spirit . . . where the Spirit of the Lord is,
there is liberty.'
These texts, taken almost at random from the
countless references of the New Testament, do give
us when we strip them of pietistic associations, an
overwhelming sense of vigorous and incalculable
action; an Energy that intervenes, breaks through
from another plane of being, to modify or transform
the chain of cause and effect. As we dwell on them,
we receive the strong impression of one order acting
on and through another order: of the whole human
scene as subject to the free and mysterious action
of a Creative Power. This sense of an imminent
Act reaches its full intensity, and is expressed with
poetic energy in the prophetic and apocalyptic
writers; but it is essential to all living Christianity.
The life of prayer hinges on it. It underlies all
sacramental religion.
Veni, Sancte Spiritus,
Et emitte coelitus
Lucis tuae radium.
page 18
The Church's great hymn to the Spirit, the Golden
Sequence, beginning with the word Come, presents
the very essence of Biblical religion; and marks the
line of cleavage between natural and supernatural
theology.
For when the Spirit is defined in the Christian
Creed, not only as Lord and Giver of Life, but as
One who 'spake by the Prophets', the Church
takes her departure from any doctrine which merely
equates the Holy Spirit with the general immanence
of God. Here, we are asked to acknowledge
the free and personal action of the Absolute
on and through individuals: using, modifying, or
even thwarting the stream of causation we know
as Natural Law. We are invited to recognize that
action working within history, sometimes gradually,
but sometimes suddenly; bringing forth prophets,
saints, men of action; compelling them in defiance
of all natural prudence to declare the Divine Will,
do the Divine Work. In the controlling and enlightening
Paraclete promised in the Fourth Gospel,
who is the real hero of the Book of Acts, we experience
the working of that same Spirit who rules the
pageant of the heavens and sways the tides of
history: here proceeding from the Heart of Deity
to overrule and energize the clumsy efforts of imperfect
men. Here we find a place for all those strange
episodes in history where we feel another order intervening,
and the march of events seems to pass
beyond human control. So too those moments
when everything seems to hang on the appearance
page 19
of a particular person, leader, reformer or saint;
or, yet more confounding, the crucial part which
some very simple and apparently unsuitable person
is abruptly called to play these receive a certain
explanation, even though the implied facts exceed
anything we are able to comprehend. For here,
all that we know of the action of personality
even in its poor human expression requires us
to infer its influence on the mysterious currents
that control the great and little histories of the
world.
'O, Action Divine !'
cries Caussade,
'you have unveiled
to me your immensity. I can make no step
save within your unmeasured Heart. All which
flows from you to-day, flowed yesterday. Your abyss
is the bed of that river of graces which pours forth
without ceasing—all is upheld and all is moved by
you. Therefore I need seek you no more within
the narrow limits of a book, of the life of a Saint,
of a sublime idea. These are mere drops from that
Ocean which I see poured out on all creation. The
Divine Action overwhelms them all. They are but
atoms which disappear within that abyss."
Here the general sense of God Immanent, penetrating
and supporting His creation, is completed
by the sense of God Acting, and wholly present in
the act. And this free and loving action is sometimes
perceived by us operating over a wide span ;
sometimes in astonishing detail and intensity within a
single soul. Both must be held together, in defiance
of
consistency, if we are to express the rich paradox
page 20
of Spirit as self-revealed to men. Again and again
naturalism strays from this, the only religious
attitude; and again and again our view of reality
suffers a corresponding impoverishment.
