Disregarding the over beliefs, and confining ourselves to what is common and generic, we havein the fact that the conscious person is continuous with a wider self through which savingexperiences come,[359] a positive content of religious , it seems to me, is literallyand objectively true as far as it goes.
If I now proceed to state my own hypothesis about the farther limits of this extension of ourpersonality, I shall be offering my own over-belief--though I know it will appear a sorry under-belief to some of you--for which I can only bespeak the same indulgence which in a converse caseI should accord to yours.
[359] "The influence of the Holy Spirit, exquisitely called the Comforter, is a matter of actualexperience, as solid a reality as that of electro magnetism." W. C. Brownell, Scribner's Magazine,vol. xxx. p. 112.
<506> The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimensionof existence from the sensible and merely "understandable" world. Name it the mystical region, orthe supernatural region, whichever you choose. So far as our ideal impulses originate in this region(and most of them do originate in it, for we find them possessing us in a way for which we cannotarticulately account), we belong to it in a more intimate sense than that in which we belong to thevisible world, for we belong in the most intimate sense wherever our ideals belong. Yet the unseenregion in question is not merely ideal, for it produces effects in this world. When we communewith it, work is actually done upon our finite personality, for we are turned into new men, andconsequences in the way of conduct follow in the natural world upon our regenerative change.
