Time & Perspective Quote by Evelyn Underhill

Underhill’s line is a quiet rebuke to the modern addiction to “feeling something” as proof that something is real. She’s writing out of the Christian mystical tradition, where the most consequential work of the spirit is often subterranean: long stretches of dryness, distraction, even boredom that look like failure if you confuse God with an inner mood. The sentence punctures that confusion with almost managerial calm: the action is continuous; your awareness is incidental.

The intent is pastoral and disciplinary at once. Pastoral, because it comforts people who assume their lack of spiritual fireworks means abandonment. Disciplinary, because it denies the ego its favorite spiritual currency: experiences to collect, narrate, and rank. Underhill’s subtext is that “spiritual sensations” can be as unreliable as any other sensation - pleasurable, dramatic, and easily mistaken for the point. If you’re always checking your pulse to see if you’re alive, you’re already halfway to forgetting what living is.

Context matters. Underhill wrote in an early 20th-century world where institutional religion was strained by scientific prestige, war, and a rising market for privatized spirituality. Her move is to relocate authority away from the volatility of the inner life and toward a steadier theology of grace: God as agent, not accessory. The line also smuggles in a moral challenge: if God is acting “all the time,” then the real question isn’t “Did I feel inspired?” but “Am I being changed?”