Once and again in my life I have seen myself suspended in a trance over the abyss; once and again I have found myself at the cross-roads, confronted by a choice of ways and aware that in choosing one I should be renouncing all the others--for there is no turning back upon these roads of life; and once and again in such unique moments as these I have felt the impulse of a mighty power, conscious, sovereign and loving.

And then, before the feet of the wayfarer, opens out the way of the Lord."[9] Compare with this Upton the Unitarian: "If," he says, "this Absolute Presence, which meets us face to face in the most momentous of our life's experiences, which pours into our fainting the elixir of new life-mud strength, and into our wounded hearts the balm of a quite infinite sympathy, cannot fitly be called a personal presence, it is only because this word personal is too poor and carries with it associations too human and too limited adequately to express this profound God-consciousness."[10] Such a personal God-consciousness is the one impelling cause of those moral struggles, sacrifices and purifications, those costing and heroic activities, to which all greatly spiritual souls find themselves drawn.
We note that these souls experience it even when it conflicts with their philosophy: for a real religious intuition is always accepted by the self that has it as taking priority of thought, and carrying with it so to speak its own guarantees.

Thus Blake, for whom the Holy Ghost was an "intellectual fountain," hears the Divine Voice crying: "I am not a God afar off, I am a brother and friend; Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me."[11] Thus in the last resort the Sufi poet can only say: "O soul, seek the Beloved; O friend, seek the Friend!"[12] Thus even Plotinus is driven to speak of his Divine Wisdom as the Father and ever-present Companion of the soul,[13] and Kabir, for whom God is the Unconditioned and the Formless, can yet exclaim: "From the beginning until the end of time there is love between me and thee: and how shall such love be extinguished ?"[14] Christianity, through its concepts of the Divine Fatherhood and of the Eternal Christ, has given to this sense of personal communion its fullest and most beautiful expression: "Amore, chi t'ama non sta ozioso, tanto li par dolce de te gustare, ma tutta ora vive desideroso como te possa stretto piu amare; che tanto sta per te lo cor gioioso, chi nol sentisse, nol porria parlare quanto e dolce a gustare lo tuo sapore."[15] On the immense question of _what_ it is that lies behind this sense of direct intercourse, this passionate friendship with the Invisible, I cannot enter.

But it has been one of the strongest and most fruitful influences in religious history, and gives in particular its special colour to the most perfect developments of Christian mysticism.
Last--and here is the aspect of religious experience which is specially to concern us--Spirit is felt as an inflowing power, a veritable accession of vitality; energizing the self, or the religious group, impelling it to the fullest and most zealous living-out of its existence, giving it fresh joy and vigour, and lifting it to fresh levels of life.

This sense of enhanced life is a mark of all religions of the Spirit.