The Spiritual Life; Evelyn Underhill, Morehouse Publ. Harrisburg, Penn., 1937

A spiritual life is simply a life in which all that we do comes from the center, where we are anchored in God; a life soaked through and through by a sense of His reality and claim, and self-given to the great movement of His will.

There is no occasion for tumult, strain, conflict, anxiety, once we have reached the living conviction that God is All. All takes place within Him. He alone matters.

To enter consciously into the spiritual life will mean time and attention given to it; a deliberate drawing-in from the circumference to the center, that ‘setting of life in order’ for which St. Thomas Aquinas prayed.

The word Adoration implies the upward and outward look of humble and joyful admiration. Awe-struck delight in the splendour and beauty of God, the action of God and the Being of God, in and for Himself alone.

St. John of the Cross says that every quality or virtue, which the Spirit really produces in us, has three distinguishing characters—Tranquility, Gentleness and Strength. All our action must be peaceful, gentle and strong. It suggests an immense depth, and an invulnerable steadiness which come from the fact that our small action is now part of the total action of God whose Spirit ‘works always in tranquility.

Fuss and feverishness, anxiety, intensity, intolerance, instability, pessimism and wobble, and every kind of hurry and worry—these are signs of the self-made and self-acting soul.

“He who is in a hurry delays the things of God,”