PERSONAL RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE 405 



of loveliness; " and although," he wrote, " from henceforth the 

 precept to ' work while it is day ' will doubtless but gain an in- 

 tensified force from the terribly intensified meaning of the words 

 that ' the night cometh when no man can work/ yet when, at 

 times, I think, as think at times I must, of the appalling contrast 

 between the hallowed glory of that creed which once was mine, 

 and the lonely mystery of existence, as now I find it, at such 

 times I shall ever feel it impossible to avoid the sharpest pang of 

 which my nature is susceptible." These pathetic words of George 

 Romanes are proof enough that the loss of the sense of God can 

 cast a blight over the human spirit. 



I wish to consider what religion does for a man in relation (1) to 

 the world of nature, (2) to his inner life, (3) to the men and women 

 about him. (1) I shall not say much of his relation to nature, and 

 yet something has to be said; for perhaps most religious people are 

 too little impressed by this aspect of religion. They call in the 

 help of God to support them when the shadows come, but they 

 forget to contemplate the glory and the love which shine through 

 all the works which he has made - - the sea and the earth and " the 

 splendid breadth of the open sky." There is much in nature that 

 seems hard and cruel; in some of her moods she seems like a very 

 monster, " red in tooth and claw." But to the man who has 

 learned to look out upon the world with the eyes of Jesus, it is 

 one of the many mansions of the Father's beautiful house. He 

 sees the Father wherever he turns his eyes. It is the Father who 

 causes the sun to shine upon the just and upon the unjust, and who 

 sends the seedtime and harvest, the summer and winter, the cold 

 and heat, the day and night. To such a man it is never very far 

 to God; for the earth is the Lord's and the fullness of it, and on 

 any spot of it the religious man will find him. He lifts up his 

 eyes to the starlit heavens, and he sees in them " the wide and 

 shining house of God." He feels at home in the universe; for the 

 universe is his Father's house, and he is his Father's son. He 



" Can be calm and free from care 

 On any shore, since God is there." 



He is not alone, never alone, for the Father is with him; and the 

 abiding presence of the Father transfigures for him the whole 

 world. Wherever I am, in the loneliness of a strange land, or in 

 the silences of the night, " nevertheless I am still with thee." 



(2) Now if this faith in God is able to transfigure the world, to 

 reveal it to me as the Father's house, and to light it up with the 

 Father's love, still more is it able to transfigure my life. Think 

 for one moment of the difference that it makes to the inner life 

 of a man as soon as he believes with all his soul that God is. If 



