hunger and thirst of soul reveal something in us which no earthly supplies can satisfy. Our sins and failures and frailties call for the help and healing of a divine Savior. We are made so that we cannot live without streams of spiritual energy, without the incoming of saving grace and transforming power. We cannot be victorious and triumphant without a heavenly Friend, a divine Companion. And in our need, in our stress, he offers himself to us. He comes with his help and healing. He seems completely to fit our need. But only a venture of faith can settle the matter for us. He has saved others. He has enabled others to more than conquer. It is a safe venture, and it stands and vindicates every test.

III

A RELIGION WHICH DOES THINGS

In his recent book, A Challenge to the Church, William Temple says:

"The religious experience, which is indeed the soul of personal religion, does not consist in passing states, but is what the name should imply an experience whole and entire which is religious through and through, so that our experience of business, of politics, of art, and of all human relationships becomes a religious experience."

He goes on further to say that the exalted moments of high-tide experience, when the soul feels flooded with unusual incomes of divine life, "should be merely moments perpetually renewing the light in which we see the world and the vital strength by which we live among men."

On

This is a modern way of saying what was so wonderfully said in a letter written on the shores of the Ægean Sea by a man who was fighting beasts" in an ancient city, "dying daily" with crucifying struggles, and perpetually confronted with entrenched evils and iniquitous customs. top of his load of perplexities in Ephesus had just been piled the news of the growing disintegration of his church across the sea in Corinth. A tale of woe was pouring in now from "the house of Chloe," now again from a delegation of the church sent over to ask help, and finally through an epistle which some of his friends wrote to him. It becomes only too clear that much "wood, hay, and stubble" had been built in with the purer saintly material there. Divisions and contentions were playing havoc. Crass immoralities, well known in that environment, were assailing the members. Unanswerable metaphysical questions were confusing their minds, and practical

problems of organization and procedure were urgently pressing for solution.

Somewhere in a little room of a private house

perhaps of a certain Mary then living in Ephesus, who bestowed much labor upon us "— the marvelous message was written to those "called to be saints" in Corinth. The thing I preached among you in those months of fellowship, he tells them, was not a novel philosophy subject to endless debate. I made you acquainted with a new power of life, an energy of salvation that demonstrates itself through the whole life of the whole man, until the entire personality, body and all, becomes a temple, a place where the Spirit of God is manifested. This religion of life and demonstration, expressed everywhere in this Ægean letter, comes to its full splendor of expression in the thirteenth chapter, where the beauty of the style suddenly reveals the greatness of the soul of the man, as great style always does. Religion, as it comes to light in this extraordinary passage, is not some rare exalted state, some startling ecstasy, some spectacular wonder granted to a favorite saint. Many persons coveted this high state and strained after it. They looked upon the striking gift of tongues," the power to speak some celes

tial language such as angels speak, as the very pinnacle of religion. It is not so, these great words tell them. One may attain that goal, achieve that state, and still be only like "a noisy gong" that attracts attention. Nor again is religion to be found in a signal acquisition of knowledge. One may understand the mysteries and unravel the secrets of nature and yet fail to arrive anywhere. He may be able to extend his powers of vision by aid of microscope and telescope; he may invent engines which add unsuspected powers of speed to his legs; he may construct mechanisms that carry his voice with amazing quickness across wide spaces; he may fly faster and farther than any bird. And yet all this may bring no increment to his soul. With all his added range of knowledge, he himself, in all that really concerns life, may be a zero-"nothing."

Religion is not found then, is not revealed, in an isolated and separable aspect of life. It is a way of living which affects the whole of life, inner and outer, in all its attitudes and relationships. If one word is to be found which gathers up and expresses this complete spiritualization of life, the best word for it is St. Paul's untranslatable agape, which means a living power flowing through all the activities of daily life, touching every aspect,

transforming every relationship, and bringing a vital strength into every coöperative effort. We translate it as "love," but we must not think of it as "a a soft and cooing" thing, an emotional state, or sentimental gush. It is primarily power. It is energy expressing itself in action.

In fact, the only way to grasp its meaning adequately is to turn to the supreme exhibition of it and that is in Christ crucified, where the power of God making men saved comes to full revelation. One typical race looked for God in rare and spectacular events, in signs and wonders. Another group expected to find him through speculation and dialectic, and thrilled over the construction of vast intellectual systems. But no external" sign can reveal God's character. No system of knowledge can bring to light the inner nature of the Eternal Heart. Only experience will suffice for that, and an experience of it is possible only if God himself breaks through somewhere in the universe and reveals the heart we seek in a life we can appreciate and interpret. Christ is the place in the universe where God himself breaks through and shows the power of love in full operation. Not as storm and thunder, not as fire and earthquake, but as love, that suffers long and is kind and will not let go, does God come to seek