THE FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OF RELIGION 247 



ceivably reveal to any other. Only to God is the deepest in us 

 " naked and laid open." And that means that only unto God can 

 that complete revelation of ourselves be made that must underlie 

 the deepest personal relation of which we are capable. 



Moreover, men are mastered in different degrees by two great 

 contrary instincts --the instinct, on the one hand, of self-devotion; 

 the instinct, on the other, of an insatiate thirst for love; and there is 

 only one relation in which a man can give himself with absolute 

 devotion, only one in which the response can wholly satisfy, if a 

 man is fully awake to the real and ultimate meaning of his experiences. 

 And this means that we are helpless in the face of the deepest instincts 

 in us apart from God. " I came from God," George MacDonald 

 makes one of his characters say, " and I'm going back to God, and 

 I won't have any gaps of death in the middle of my life." 



It is natural, therefore, that only under the great motives of 

 religion should the artistic medium be felt to be fully filled by 

 the sentiment it carries. Even the esthetic power of our natures 

 is swept in its full compass only by the undying religious appeal; 

 because only a conviction essentially religious can assure us of the 

 final and complete worthfulness of life. We need to be able to re- 

 spond with some real conviction to the prophetic appeal: "Arise, 

 shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon 

 thee." " Lift up your heads, ye gates; and be ye lifted up, ye 

 everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in." 



(4) Once more, religion and education are most closely akin in the 

 final results attained. The highest results of a true education are 

 convictions and ideals. The danger, no doubt, of a shallow educa- 

 tion is over-sophistication - - the false tolerance that is essentially 

 indifferentism, because the great fundamental convictions and ideals 

 have lost their hold on the man. Nevertheless, if it is the business 

 of a true education to fit for high and rational living, then it must 

 still be true that the highest results to be demanded from such an 

 education are convictions and ideals; and the deepest convictions 

 and the highest ideals, it should be remembered, are those of religion. 

 For no convictions go deeper, and none are more vital, than religion's 

 great assertions of the love of God and the life of love; they are 

 practically all-inclusive. And even education would have reached 

 its highest conceivable result only in the establishment of these con- 

 victions and their implied ideals. The real forces in education are 

 persons, even on the intellectual side. The greatest results of educa- 

 tion are convictions and ideals. And the supreme persons, convic- 

 tions, and ideals are those of religion - - are Christian. 



We may, then, reasonably conclude that in aim, in means and 

 spirit, in method, and in results, religion and education may be said 

 essentially to agree. And that is to say: It is not possible for us to 



