SPIRITUAL ENERGIES IN DAILY LIFE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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SPIRITUAL ENERGIES
IN DAILY LIFE
BY
RUFUS M. JONES, Litt.D., D.D.
Professor of Philosophy in Haverford College
Author of Studies in Mystical Religion; The Inner Life;
The World Within, etc.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1922,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1922
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PREFACE
I wish to thank the editor of The AtlanticMonthly for his permission to print in this volumethe chapter entitled “The Mystic’s Experienceof God,” also the editors of The Journal of Religionfor their permission to use the article on“Psychology and the Spiritual Life.” Some ofthe shorter essays have been printed in The(London) Friend and in The Homiletic Review.Kind permission has been granted for their reproduction.
INTRODUCTION
RELIGION AS ENERGY
Religion is an experience which no definitionexhausts. One writer with expert knowledge ofanthropology tells us what it is, and we know aswe read his account that, however true it may beas far as it goes, it yet leaves untouched muchundiscovered territory. We turn next to thetrained psychologist, who leads us “down thelabyrinthine ways of our own mind” and tells uswhy the human race has always been seeking Godand worshiping Him. We are thankful for hisAriadne thread which guides us within the maze,but we feel convinced that there are doors whichhe has not opened—“doors to which he had nokey.” The theologian, with great assurance andwithout “ifs and buts,” offers us the answer to allmysteries and the solution of all problems, butwhen we have gone “up the hill all the way tothe very top” with him, we find it a “homesickpeak”—Heimwehfluh—and we still wonderover the real meaning of religion.
We are evidently dealing here with something[viii]like that drinking horn which the Norse God Thortried to drain. He failed to do it because thehorn which he assayed to empty debouched intothe endless ocean, and therefore to drain the hornmeant drinking the ocean dry. To probe religiondown to the bottom means knowing “what Godand man is.” Each one of u