RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE: PERSONAL 401 



man, but not men, the generic man without the individual! It 

 is of a piece with so many arguments of political economists about 

 human life in terms of x and y, and their talk of the masses, 

 as if the masses were not composed of units, each with his own 

 heart's bitterness and his heart's joy. We play with words when 

 we talk of tendencies and movements, as if we were really account- 

 ing for anything by the use of words like these; and our preference 

 of such general terms to acknowledging the creative influence of 

 individuals is part of the latent infidelity which dislikes to admit 

 creation in any sphere, the launching of a force straight from the 

 hand and the heart of God. 



It is thus we find room for revelation and a place for personal 

 religion, a place for communion with God, and the influence of all 

 that religion stands for on the single human soul, and thus also we 

 find room for the unique place an inspired and consecrated soul 

 can have in his generation, influencing others and lifting life to a 

 higher level. If a generation has any distinctive character at all, 

 it is, and must be, the fruit of personal character. And it is here 

 in this region that religion does its permanent work. In its ulti- 

 mate issue religion consists of a relation of the soul to God. Reli- 

 gion is communion, entering into and living in a relationship of 

 love and service and obedience to God. The abiding power of our 

 Christian faith is that Christ brings us into this relation of simple 

 trust and loving dependence on our Heavenly Father. Religious 

 influence, then, is personal before it can be social. It brings the 

 individual into the presence of God. There is a moment, which 

 came to the prophets and to men called to exceptional work, a 

 moment when the world is dissolved, when earth has faded and 

 heaven has opened and reveals the eternal, a moment when in all 

 the universe there seems nothing but God and the human soul. 

 That moment altered the perspective of everything afterwards 

 to the Hebrew prophets; they read everything in the light of that 

 moment, and when in the future they were brought up against 

 seemingly impassable difficulties and things that seemed irreconcil- 

 able with their faith, they simply fell back upon God; for they 

 knew that whatever else might be false that great experience must 

 be true. 



To most of us our religious assurance does not come in that 

 direct fashion; it is mediated to us, so to speak. It is brought to us 

 by human hands. From soul to soul the flame leaps and spreads. 

 The fire is kindled from the living glow in another's heart. But we 

 are here in the same mysterious region of personality, the Holy of 

 holies of the human spirit, where God meets with man and man 

 tastes the power of endless life. The unique work of Christ is 

 that he proves himself to be the way of access to God. To see him 



