40 THE UNFATHOMED UNIVERSE 



scendental concepts; its aim does not include attempting to 

 give ultimate explanations. 



Religion has been described as the orienting of our life 

 towards the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. But this 

 does not grip ; it leaves out the essential — the mystical — ele- 

 ment. Religion in essence ahvays implies a recognition — 

 practical, emotional, and intellectual — of a higher or deeper 

 order of reality than is reached in sense-experience. It means 

 the recognition of an unseen universe, which throws light on 

 the riddles of the observed world — a light which may give 

 aid. In the scientific light of common day are seen the 

 hosts of the Assyrians encompassing the city; the opened 

 religious eye sees the mountains crowded with the chariots 

 of God. 



But let us quote an authority. Prof. D. S. Cairns writes 

 (1918, p. 21) : ^^ Religion is, fundamentally, on the human 

 side, man's protest and appeal to the Supreme against the 

 sorrows, indignities, and sins of this present world. It is 

 the endeavour of man, through that appeal, to unite him- 

 self with the life of that unseen and ruling world, and so 

 to win the power from it to dominate and transmute the 

 life of time. That is to say, in essence, religion, on the 

 human side, is simply the sustained endeavour to meet this 

 great human problem of the destroying Mature and the 

 struggling personality. All religions have this at their heart. 

 They, one and all, start from an act of faith in an unseen 

 world which is mightier than the world of sense and time, 

 and which is either already friendly or may be made friendly 

 to the worshippers." He goes on to say that in all religions 

 there may be recognised three great constant elements — the 

 conception of an unseen ruling world, some idea of the 

 supreme good which the worshipper may derive from Heaven 



