It has not been easy to decide on a suitable title for this address. The phrase ‘significant life’ has been chosen in preference to ‘role’, ‘function’, or even—wilder flights, these—‘inner life’ or ‘soul’. The point has been to indicate a perspective (rather than to frame a policy) for our common life of study at Blackfriars, and to propose it for inspection and reflection (not for instant discussion). I am conscious that many of my hearers this evening have had to listen to me before, sometimes for many years, and it is hardly likely that they will hear anything new from me today; and yet there would seem to be some value in publicly rehearsing, with some ceremoniousness, views which are intended to elicit positive attitudes of assent or dissent, to contribute to a common if differentiated consciousness. With this in mind, I have upon careful consideration determined to speak with as much honesty as I am capable of; the time has really passed, if it ever existed, for triumphalism of any form, conservative or progressive. What is offered is a ‘Here I stand’, like Luther’s; but it is not necessarily, not yet, anyway, an I can do no other’, provided someone shows me how. Those of my hearers who are not Dominicans have at least done us the honour of sharing our erratic pilgrimage, and I must suppose that they too will not be without concern for an attempt to sketch out its horizons, if hardly to plot its future course.