THE TERM "SPIRITUALITY" IS USED IN VARIOUS SENSES. IN THE
BROADEST, IT DEFINES THE LOFTIEST MORAL AND INTELLECTU-
al qualities of man in his relation to God and to nature, to him-
self and to his fellow-men. In social or cultural life, spirituality in
this sense finds expression in the philosophy, art, and ethic of a
nation or of a civilization. Wordsworth or Keats, for example,
is highly representative of English spirituality as it is expressed
in the Romantic Movement of the nineteenth century.

In its stricter, or narrower, connotation, spirituality is applied
to the religious life in its innermost and deepest strata, the life
with God and all spiritual experiences arising from this source.
Prayer is the center, the core, of spirituality -- and this is true
not of mystical prayer alone. As a matter of fact, mysticism as
the experience of union with God (a feature of many religions
besides Christianity) is a rare phenomenon in religious life. It is
true, of course, that the spiritual energies generated by this
prayer of union do not remain sealed in the cell of the con-
templative saint but diffuse themselves, sometimes fructifying
very remote areas in the civilized world of his age. The spiritual
influences exerted by St. Francis and St. Teresa are historical
examples of this, and in our own day a non-Christian, Eastern
mysticism, emanating from India, is seeping into an English
literature lately emancipated from the Puritan tradition, with
results not wholly salutary. Nevertheless the most powerful
influence upon a people is exercised, not by the mystical, but
by the common kind of prayer, by the attitude of the ordinary
man towards God, in his prayer and in his moral life. Here also
the saints, the heroically spiritual, are leaders; but chiefly such
of them as stand on common ground with the men of their
time; who can share more or less freely their spiritual experi-
ence with their fellow-men.

-v-