premely great things, the act of worship calls for intense devotion, for unusual concentration, for long-continued spiritual preparation. If it is, as I believe, the very goal and pinnacle of religion the flowering of the tree of life— then we must not expect that it will cost nothing or that it will be reached along lines of least resistance. Religion has always demanded, for its best things, the absolute price. There is no finding without losing; there is no getting without giving; there is no living without dying. For a few dollars we can get a book on religion; for a few more dollars we can get some one to talk to us about the things of religion; but what we cannot get for dollars, however high we heap them, is this experience which is the heart of religion, this experience of God, this practice of the divine presence, this joy of being ourselves in the holy of holies.

ness.

II

FAITH AS A WAY OF LIFE

Some persons think of faith as a mark of weakTo their minds it is a form, or relic, of superstition - a diet of "milk to be discarded for the "strong meat" of knowledge as soon as one is full-grown. There are many grown-up

In

boys and girls who pride themselves on having outgrown the need of this old-fashioned article. "When I was a child," they grandly say, "I thought as a child, but when I reached the age of manhood I put away childish things. I mean to accept nothing now which I cannot know." That general program, however, turns out to be very absurd. It will not work for a minute. stead of bringing emancipation, it makes life a poor rope of sand, with no power whatever to it. A little thought and insight would show this person, who is so eager to graduate from his childhood stage, that all his knowledge and all his activities are penetrated through and through with faith. He cannot move a step without it; he cannot even start to think without it. He must trust the evidence of his senses. He must have faith that there is a world which corresponds to his impressions of sight and touch, of taste and smell. He must assume and believe that what is outside and beyond his mind fits what is inside. Who can ever "prove" to him that the world actually is precisely the way it looks? Nobody. That is a mighty venture of faith which we all must make. We must live in the belief that the world outside the mind and inside the mind make together one whole and coherent world.

cause

Science, too, involves faith at every point of its structure. All the tools, the instruments, the machinery of science must be taken as a venture of faith. The greatest tool it uses is the principle of everything in the universe must have a cause and must be explained by its cause. But that universal principle of science never has been proved," and, from the nature of the case, never can be "proved." It is assumed as a working principle and used on a venture of faith. There is no doubt that it works very well, but it is nevertheless faith applied to science. The "laws" of the universe which science spells out are never seen with the eye or touched with the hand. They are not material" things." They are as invisible and intangible as God himself is. They are in the sphere of faith rather than in the sphere of knowledge. We have no way of "knowing" that the laws of nature will always remain uniform, will always work as they do now, will always be reliable and trustworthy. No amount of experience could ever prove " that. We make the great venture of faith that it is so and act upon it and it works well, and on the basis of it we predict future events.

Faith is still more evident as a working energy in the practical matters of life. Society could not

basis. All

exist an hour on a bare “knowledge " basis. banks would suspend, all laws would become invalid, the world would be turned into a vast insane asylum, each individual living in solitary isolation in the whirl of his own ideas. Marriage and home-building are beautiful instances of faith. No one ever "knows," or can "know," that in the stress of years, in the give and take of life, in the lights and shadows of this world of mutability, the friend of his youthful fancy will grow dearer and truer, more inwardly beautiful and indispensable to him, and that their two individual lives and wills will merge into an indivisible union. Marriage is of necessity a venture of faith, as is friendship of every sort. That does not mean that it is a mere hazard, a blind guess. It too often is so, no doubt, but that is because the persons marrying make a hazard and are not guided by real faith.

Real faith faith which carries in itself a constructive energy- always builds on solid foundations and can test its building as it builds. Marriage is always a hazard, a chance to use the current society word, it is "a gamble "-unless the two persons who are to marry have already a sufficient experience of love and friendship with each other to warrant the faith that their intended

future will increase in worth and joy. If marriages are made for money or for beauty or social standing, there is, of course, very little ground for faith in a happy future union which will grow truer and deeper as the years go. But if the two lives have already found each other and are united in common interests, in genuine friendship, in happy personal fellowship; if their love has its roots in moral character and not in surface traits, the step is still a venture of faith, but it is a faith guaranteed and tested by experience. Faith in this case is merely building out upon the solid pillars of experience. It is the power to see and to appreciate and to trust what still remains hidden from us in the life we have already proved. It is a wellgrounded belief that the future will bring out and fulfill what the life we have come to know promises and prophesies. We trust the unseen to complete the seen, and we make our

venture.

Religious faith in its highest and best sense is of this type. It is not blind groping, haphazard believing. It is building out upon the solid pillars of the soul's experience. It is the soul's power to see what fits and fulfills and completes what is already here. Our very finite nature calls for a world of infinite reality to fulfill it. Our