568 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT -IV 



of some of them was discouraging. Anything more cold, 

 forbidding, and certain of extinction than the worship 

 of the &quot;United Presbyterians &quot; at the mission church at 

 Cairo I have never seen, save possibly that of sundry 

 Calvinists at Paris. Nor have I ever heard anything 

 more defiant of sane thought and right reason than the 

 utterances of some of these excellent men. 



But the general effect of all these experiences, as I now 

 think, was to aid in a healthful evolution of my religious 

 ideas. 



It may now be asked what is the summing up of my 

 relation to religion, as looked upon in the last years of 

 a long life, during which I have had many suggestions 

 to thought upon it, many opportunities to hear eminent 

 religionists of almost every creed discuss it, and many 

 chances to observe its workings in the multitude of sys 

 tems prevalent in various countries. 



As a beginning, I would answer that, having for many 

 years supplemented my earlier observations and studies 

 by special researches into the relations between science 

 and religion, my conviction has been strengthened that 

 religion in its true sense namely, the bringing of human 

 ity into normal relations with that Power, not ourselves, 

 in the universe, which makes for righteousness is now, 

 as it always has been, a need absolute, pressing, and 

 increasing. 



As to the character of such normal relations, I feel that 

 they involve a sense of need for worship : for praise and 

 prayer, public and private. If fine-spun theories are pre 

 sented as to the necessary superfluity of praise to a per 

 fect Being, and the necessary inutility of prayer in a 

 world governed by laws, my answer is that law is as likely 

 to obtain in the spiritual as in the natural world: that 

 while it may not be in accordance with physical laws to 

 pray for the annihilation of a cloud and the cessation 

 of a rain-storm, it may well be in accordance with spiri 

 tual laws that communication take place between the In- 



