PERSONAL RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE 



BY JOHN EDGAR M*FADYEN 



[John Edgar McFadyen, Professor of Old Testament Literature, Knox College, 

 Toronto, Canada, since 1898. b. Glasgow, Scotland, 1870. B.A. Oxford 

 University; M.A. Glasgow University. Snell Exhibitioner, Balliol, Oxford, 

 1890-94; George A. Clark Fellow in Classics, Glasgow University, 1893-97; 

 Lecturer in Hebrew, Free Church College, Glasgow, 1897-98. Member of 

 Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis. Author of The Messages of the 

 Prophetic and Priestly Historians; The Messages of the Psalmists; The Divine 

 Pursuit; Thoughts for Silent Hours; Old Testament Criticism and the Christian 

 Church ; Introduction to the Old Testament ; The Prayers of the Bible.] 



THE special theme which I have selected to discuss is the rela- 

 tion of religion to character. Who is the religious man, and what is 

 it to be such a man? What is religion? Religion is the link that 

 binds man to God; and the religious man is the man who is always 

 very sure of God. He is the man who, wherever he may be, and 

 whatever he may be called upon to do or to bear, can say with a 

 high heart, " Nevertheless I am continually with thee." He is 

 the man who counts God the great reality, and who knows himself 

 to be the friend of God. 



Now, if God be, indeed, the great reality, if he be the creator and 

 sustainer of all the worlds, if he be the lord of all, high and lifted 

 up above the chances and changes of mortality, and if he loves men, 

 surely that man must be happy and secure whose soul is stayed on 

 such a God. For if he can believe and has reason to believe that 

 such a presence as this can come into his life, that his God is 

 not merely in the heavens above or on the earth beneath, the high 

 and holy one who inhabiteth eternity, but that he is very nigh, 

 will all this mean nothing to him? Rather, will it not mean every- 

 thing? Will it not rather transfigure his life, and touch it to the 

 finest and the best that it can be? For by his side there is a friend, 

 not a force, but a friend, strong, and wise, and tender; not a force 

 that makes for righteousness, but a living God, whose love will not 

 let him go, whose light follows all his way, and by whose law he 

 must live. To such a man life will, indeed, be a solemn and mys- 

 terious thing. He will feel himself to be standing on the shores 

 of infinity and eternity. But the mystery is one which he does not 

 fear, for it is the mystery of love. " I am continually with thee. 

 Thou dost hold me by the right hand. Thou dost guide me by 

 thy counsel; and when the journey of life is over, thou wilt after- 

 ward receive me to glory." To lose this faith is to let the light 

 go out of life. One who had lost it for a time has told us that with 

 this virtual negation of God, the universe to him had lost its soul 



