THE DEDICATED LIFE
Concerning the Inner Life'. By Evelyn Underhill. (Methuen. 2s.) "Do you see the great facts and splendours of religion with the eye of an artist and lover ? . Is your sense of wonder and mystery keen and deep ? " These and many such questions come into the series of addresses, now published in book form, recently given by Miss Underhill to a group of clergy. "I feel a great diffidence in coming before you as an ordinary laywoman," she says in introducing her subject, "to speak of such matters as these, since they are, after all, your peculiar and professional concern. Indeed, I only presume to do so because I care about these things very much, and have some leisure to think about them ; and so venture to put at your service certain conclusions to which I have come." But Miss Underhill need not hesitate to tell us of the deepening and expansion of the spiritual sense : there may be more learned Christians (although on her own subjects we - doubt it), but there is no one writing in English better qualified to express in terms of everyday life the high and secret conversations that the mind may hold with its Maker.
There is something very infectious about Miss Underhilrs style, with its deep-rooted common sense, its virile idiom, its wild-fires of spiritual insight and its creaturely appreciation of the beauty of the world. She speaks of the quality that "makes contagious Christians ; that makes people catch the love of God from you," and it is just this plasticity of phrase and directness of purpose that make her book so valuable. She never drops a stitch in her reasoning, yet never sews up her sentences in qualifications : she never starts a hare which she does not catch after a reasonable pursuit and cook and jug for the reader with some savoury herb from the garder of her learning.
In her other books she has assumed the role of mentor—lucid, learned, apt, but still a guide, cataloguing attributes of holiness or telling us what the sunrise looks like behind the mists on the uplands of the spiritual life where saints have met their God.. But in these addresses she speaks, by inference it least, of her own experiences in the life of contemplation and shows us how this devotional temper unites the mill, imagination and heart, concentrating them on one single aim, namely, to be "to the Eternal Goodness what his own hand is to a man, a supple and living tool." .
"Especially, I think, these times of secret prayer should train the priest to live more and more intensely towards God in his conducting of liturgic prayer." The quickening of the religious sensitiveness in a congregation is conditioned by the degree of the priest's absorption in God during the service. A strange thing this, but true : no sermon, no music, has such power as the beautiful example of prayer. "It is wonder" fulls- impressive to see a soul that really loves Cod. . . speaking-,
- _ .• . to Him." • - • • And a priest insist not only learn to Meditate and pray :. he should use his own church for his private • devotions.: Many Anglican churches have the weok-day air of" a spiritual:
drawing-mom in dust sheets. . "Surely it is part of Your business to make your church homely and lovable, and espcciallY, if you can,' e- give it a Welcoming. aspect at those hours when the working people who are -sogreatly in need of its tranquillizing-influence can inconspicuously slip in. . . This creation.of a real supernatural home,and steady practice of real supernatural hospitality is the first point, it seems to me, in which a clergyman can hardly fail to make his inner life directly serve his flock."
We cannot do more than give these brief general indications • of Miss Underhill's subject. It would be difficult to over-: praise this book for it brims over with a wit and wisdom not' always to be found in -pious works, yet preserves and reports: to us what is communicable of the vision and the feeling of one, who has heard and seen in that Silence which the mystics know. The Silence is always about as if we will but still the carkings of our tense and distrustful minds ; .Miss _Underhill makes it real for us. . Nobody was ever more _practical than the mystics of the Church : nothing is more needed in the Church to-day than this spirit -of . devotion, linked to an active life of ministry, as it was in the great Example for all mankind. These addresses will bear reading and re-reading- for they are the fruits of a life that is all tee rare in this day and age.
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