Under this title a representative group of clergy and laity gathered for a two-day conference at Hawkesyard Priory, in Staffordshire, from 3rd to the 5th October. It was the first Life of the Spirit Conference, and because it was the first the subject was rather wide and the final result perhaps lacked the concrete conclusiveness that might be desired of such a meeting. But it showed that in future more specific meetings would be valuable because of the problems raised and the opportunities realised for discussions and for ‘contacts'.

The purpose of the conference was twofold. Firstly in the minds of the conveners has long been fear of beating the air with the words thrown out from Life of the Spirit without reaching real men and women of today. It is necessary for a review of this Nature to keep very closely in touch with the lives of real people in order to help to supply some of their spiritual needs.

Students of primitive religions have revealed some very important aspects of the natural response of man to the Creator, aspects which have sometimes become overlaid by the more sophisticated types of cultured religion. One of the differences between that natural response and the educated worship of classical times may be seen in the theory and practice of purification, and the comparison between the two bears remarkably on the modern Christian's attitude to mortification.

The almost universal conception of purity and impurity is that of the unmixed and the mixed. The pure note sounds without admixture of over- or under-tones, or of any other sound but its simple music; pure milk has no foreign germ, no water mixed with it. And among the primitive peoples the brand of impurity or defilement arose from the mixture of races, of sexes, of seasons. Men have to keep their weapons and implements apart from the Women's household utensils.

Speaking of the life which aims at full union with God in prayer, one who is a ‘master’ in the knowledge and practice of such a life said, with a rueful smile: ‘The interior life has many disadvantages'! He did not refer to the self-evident disadvantages, as they might be called, which are the natural result of giving up certain things incompatible with the life of the spirit. He meant rather ‘disadvantages’ that are part and parcel of the interior life even for those who willingly embrace it. Such disadvantages imply, for example, the absence of certain consolations; the lack of any certainty of real progress and of any personal satisfaction in advancing along the way to God.

So often, those who are really striving to start out on the way which seems to lead to union with our Lord apparently get lost on the road; they seem to be held back from making progress by a kind of ‘mist’ which surrounds them and dispels the clearness of vision experienced when they started out.

St John tells us in his gospel that St John the Baptist, when he saw our Lord coming to him, cried out: ‘Behold the Lamb of God. Behold him who taketh away the sin of the world’ (John i, 29). The voice of the Baptist has from that moment challenged the world, for though John the Baptist died his martyr's death, the living voice of the Church still proclaims his message. To the world, to all mankind, she says: ‘Behold the Lamb of God'; and in saying this she forces the human race to make some answer to the question: ‘Whom do men say that I am?’ (Mark 8, 27.)

Habit, or ignorance springing from indifference, seems to have made the question almost meaningless; or—and here, I think, we get a little nearer to the bone—it is half listened to, its implications half grasped, and then half uneasily, by a secret act of will, which is almost masked, even from ourselves; we avert our attention onto some less disturbing subject.

In the preceding passage, John had been questioned and had given testimony to Christ. Now he gives further testimony spontaneously, giving the testimony first and then confirming what he had said before, in the words: ‘And John gave testimony saying … ‘ The circumstances of his giving testimony are described in the first place, followed by his exact words: ‘Behold the Lamb of God'; his witness is excluded from suspicion by the words: ‘And I knew him not'.

Details of the circumstances are given firstly as to time, where it says, ‘The next day', and here the perseverance of St John is especially commended, because he went on giving testimony to our Lord, not upon one day alone, nor even once only, but upon several days and at different times: ‘Every day will I bless thee'. (Ps. 144.) His increase in fervour is also commended, for we ought not to allow each succeeding day to pass without variation; it ought to be different from the preceding, which means better, as the Psalmist says: ‘They shall go from virtue to virtue.’

When the great Moses undertook to initiate the Israelites into the Divine mysteries which had been inaugurated on Mount Sinai, he did not consider them ready to receive the theophany until he had ordained the purification of the people by chastity and the sprinkling of water. But even so they did not brave the manifestation of the Divine Power, but were struck down by all the apparitions, the fire and the darkness, the smoke and the trumpets. So they turned back and asked the Lawgiver to be their mediator of the will of God, seeing that they were not fit by their own power to draw near to God to receive the Divine manifestation. But when our Lawgiver the Lord Jesus Christ is bringing us to Divine grace, he does not show us Mount Sinai covered with darkness and smoking with fire, nor does he strike fear into us by the meaningless sound of trumpets.

Readers of this review will already be familiar with the name of Edith Stein—or Sister Benedicta, as we prefer to call her (cf. the May 1949, February and April 1950 issues of Life of the Spirit). Of her life something has been said, and the translation of her biography should soon be available in English. We are now able to enter more deeply into her thought through die publication of her works. In 1949 Schnell and Steiner Verlag of Munich published some of her essays on woman's vocation under the title Frauenbildung und Frauenberufe. Meanwhile Dr Gelber of Louvain and Fr Romaeus Leuven, O.C.D., have been preparing an edition of her complete works, which are being published jointly by Herder Verlag of Freiburg and Nauwelaerts of Louvain. Some eight volumes are envisaged of which two have appeared in 1950. The second, Kreuzeswissenschaft ('The Science of the Cross’), can be described here along with the earlier work on Roman's vocation.

In Newman's beautiful words: ‘two only absolute and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator', the believer recognises these as the real terms united by religion. Religion is the sacred, unutterable intercourse between a limited, sinful creature and Being and Holiness. Between the living God, as the Scriptures so often call him, and his living image, there is a personal and dramatic relationship, in which dread and tenderness, awe and love, hope and anxiety are mingled.

The ideas of the psychologist on a mysterious experience of this sort are very often perplexing to the theologian or the lay Christian. To do justice to psychological works on religion, one must bear in mind the various levels at which religious phenomena can be viewed. Empirical methods of psychology cannot alter a metaphysical truth, still less supernatural faith. They are unable to prove or disprove the validity of religious belief. But morality, religion, faith are lived by means of human acts which are partially subjected to psychology