RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE 415 



of the simple and the familiar we find the sublime. The higher 

 ardors grow out of the lower as naturally as the branches of a tree 

 from its root and stem. The branches take from the light and air of 

 heaven new energy, and the roots strike more deeply and firmly. 



When doctrine and meditation and worship and conduct are all 

 valued, not for themselves, but as channels through which the power 

 of the infinite and eternal energy may enter the soul it seeks to 

 renew, then each is rightly understood in itself, and is set in its right 

 relation with the others. Each is endowed with higher majesty 

 when it is recognized as one of the bonds by which human life is 

 connected with the source of life. A man may indeed think clearly 

 or worship devoutly or live honorably without any consciousness of 

 high descent and destiny, without any thought as to what these 

 things mean in their universal relations. But, when to such a man 

 the consciousness comes that through his fidelity and energy the 

 eternal purpose of the universe presses to accomplish its ends, then 

 he becomes religious. Then there dawns upon his mind the won- 

 drous truth that religion is more than his effort to find God; it is 

 God finding him, the universal mind calling to the individual mind, 

 the father claiming his child. He discovers that " it is not the sheep 

 who look for the shepherd, but the shepherd who calls the sheep." 



The gospel for this age of material prosperity and ambitions, this 

 age of threatening evils and many noble aspirations, is the procla- 

 mation of the present and veritable incarnation of the eternal power, 

 the presence and life of God in the human soul, not by exceptional 

 inspiration, but inherently and organically. All enthusiasm for 

 righteousness, all desire for knowledge, every impulse of disinterested 

 loyalty, every throb of delight in beauty and in the sweetness of 

 domestic love, every capacity to overcome difficulties and rise above 

 sorrow, these are not merely channels through which the Divine 

 Life flows, but they themselves are the energies of the living God 

 dynamic in the substance of man's being. 



Religion is nothing less than " the affirmation of God in human 

 nature." It is in our recognition of the vital bond that unites the 

 Father God and his children. It is in the realization that God's 

 quickening life within us is the pledge of our immortal being, that 

 through purity of heart we see him, by truth we know him, by love 

 we dwell in him. All our work, therefore, becomes the Father's 

 business, and, whatever may be the nature of our daily toil, it is 

 sanctified and ennobled through these high associations. To thus 

 claim our kinship to God, to live by it, to recognize that it is eternal, 

 that is personal religion. 



If, then, a man commits himself in modest confidence to this 

 natural and human method of religious development, he finds in 

 his possession the key to the regions where his mysterious existence 



