imagination of the human race. But we are asked to believe that these meanings are never meant; that they are just qualities of things, like the scent of a flower. Qualities are ineffable existences to be taken as they are and no more questions asked. Minds, these organized centers of nature's activities which have developed a consciousness of meanings, but the meanings must never be taken as intended signals sent up by a friendly nature to men. This would introduce the idea of God-a personality in and behind nature-an idea which must be rigorously excluded from this scheme of things. We are left with something which looks like purpose but is not willed, something which looks like friendliness but which reveals no Friend.

III

In the face of this philosophy what positive contributions can religion claim to make to the common stock of experience, and what is the position it must take up in the defence of its claim?

At the outset, it would appear that the defenders of the religious position will have to surrender much to the conclusions to which the scientific method has led us. Whatever may be the origin and destiny of man's spirit he is tied hand and foot, body and soul with the every-day happenings of nature; energy and matter arise together, and so, too, do mind and body-force without some matter, and spirit without some body are both alike inconceivable. All man's achievements are built up on a foundation of natural events. Even his highest values are values in and for life as we know it, and have been rescued by his intellect from the mixed and ever-flowing stream of things. A supernatural world utterly detached from this world is, inevitably, outside man's experience and unknown. God and the soul may both be ineffable, beyond man's powers of conception or expression, but the activities which result from the contact of God and the soul to be known, at all, must be brought within the field of common experience; and here these activities must submit to be tested and tried by the scientific method of criticism; hidden forces both in physics and in life are known by what they do-by their fruits.

One of the first results of the application of this method of the religious field is that all appeal to supernatural authority must be abandoned. Both prophets and priests have always

shown themselves to be human like the rest of men, and when they have clothed themselves, in a mechanical way, with divine authority they have committed their worst crimes: having made a God in their own image, and in their imagination confused their idol with the only God, they have carried out the dictates of their own envy, hatred and fear in the sacred Name.

The great prophets of all peoples have never taken their inspiration mechanically as their historians and followers have often done. William Blake, in an illuminating passage, tells us that he once asked the prophet Isaiah how he dared so roundly assert that God spoke to him. Isaiah answered: "I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discovered the infinite in everything, and as I was then persuaded, and remain confirmed, that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences, but wrote."

True prophets have always been men of genius, who, having exercised all the gifts with which they were endowed in the extraction of the meaning of events, could with the authority of wisdom and to them the voice of wisdom was the voice of God -point to the inevitable consequence of the actions of men. That they did not look upon themselves as passive agents, mere channels for the word of God, is suggested by the description which Isaiah gives of the ideal prophet:

the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of council and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord."

Jesus, called by the same spirit to fulfil the office pointed to by Isaiah, at the outset of his ministry went through the experience which, in the language of poetry and drama, is symbolized for us in the account of the Temptation in the Wilderness -an experience in the deep regions of the personality which no photograph could ever have put upon the screen-the temptation to adopt a mechanical theory of his inspiration and to act contrary to the highest light of reason. With the vision of Satan and "the wild beasts" on the one side, and of God and the angels on the other, Jesus is making the decision upon which his whole life is to turn: God or Satan? He hungers with the hunger of unsatisfied desire. The temptation comes to him to satisfy this hunger in three typical ways: the way of riches, material "goods", which would limit his activities to the economic plane; the way of ecclesiastical power, which would necessitate

all sorts of compromises with the world and the flesh; and, lastly, the way of world-wide political power.

Jesus answers the Tempter in words which give us the meaning of a "Son of God".

The Tempter said unto him:

"If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread."

Jesus replies:

"It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

Then the devil taketh him into the holy city; and he set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto him:

"If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down, for it is written: He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and on their hands they shall bear thee up, lest haply thou dash thy foot against a stone."

"Again it is written, Thou shalt not make trial of the Lord thy God."

Again, the devil taketh him unto an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto him:

"All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me."

"Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written: Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."

The world kingdom towards which Jesus set his face was the kingdom pointed to by the same prophet, Isaiah, with the words: "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."

In this experience we have clearly presented to us what religion demands in an inspired leader of men. He must be wise with wisdom of the gathered experiences of the past handed down to us in the treasures of literature and art-"scriptures" from which, by laborious search, we may extract the eternal life which they enshrine. He must try no experiments with God contrary to the light of wisdom-experiments which in their inception necessitate the breaking of the bonds of love and faith-expecting that God will help him. And in the object of his worship he must place the illuminating, liberating energy of love above all might and power.

Here we have all that the scientific philosopher can ask

the ever-active search for knowledge, understanding, wisdomwith the added element of the knowledge and fear of the Lord. And "fear" is not the fear of terror, but the fear which is one with love fear which is worship and "delight" the highest form of pleasure. Is there any basis in existence and in experience for this added element?

This brings us to the center of the religious position. Behind the face of ever-changing nature is God: God, the source of all power, the creator of all beauty, the truth of all stable relationship, the life which flows through all things: God in whom the highest attribute of man-love-finds its eternal fulfilment in fellowship with the source from which it flows: The meaning of all meanings is joyous activity, not the dead end of all that life means to us.

Jesus proclaimed himself to be the Way to be trodden to the Father, the Bread of Life to be eaten and inwardly digested, the Word to be heard and understood, the Light to be used and not hid. He did not offer himself as a meaningless portent to be gazed at in passive contemplation: one whose Name could be used as a magical formula by men in the furtherance of their own ends.

The God which religion thus presents to us is not the God of pantheism, in which all personality loses its meaning, and the soul of man is extinguished, sunk in the soulless mechanism of nature. This God is the eternal person in whom are gathered up all the mysterious elements which go to make up nature's meanings and man's personality-the God in whom wisdom and power are one with love. In loving God, and in being the object of his love, the soul of man finds immortality.

Can man experience such a God? Many of the great personalities of history, whose works and words are active forces in the lives of men today, have told us that in such experience they found their joy, their inspiration, and their strength. Can he who has had such experience so express his experience as to be a light and guide to his fellow-men? Yes, even that has been done. It is not easy, for the language of the deep regions of the soul of heaven-is the language of poetry and symbol, of highest art, and so to the pure scientist, foolishness; to the fundamental literalist, a stumblingblock; but to one who "knows himself in religion," the wisdom of God.

Those who have found God in their lives tell us, that in

any fruitful seeking of the meaning of all meanings, we must be prepared to detach ourselves from every fleeting thing, every realized, temporary end. We must watch the pointing of events, take their message, and ever press on our way, until, denying ourselves and ceasing to cling to any one of the multitude of things borne on the surface of the stream of life, we find ourselves conscious of the deep current which bears all things on its breast. Here, in the bosom of the Father, we find all "things" of nature given back to us set in their true setting, clothed with beauty, and radiant with eternal meaning; and here, too, in this consciousness we find unutterable joy.

The saints of all ages and of all races tell us they have found God-the Abyss of Darkness which no illuminated thing within the compass of the mind of man can image forth-God to whom the fire of love alone can guide us; and that in Him they have found the light of all their seeing:

"Into the happy night

In secret, seen of none,

Nor saw I ought,

Without or other light or guide,

Save that which in my heart did burn.

This fire it was that guided me

More certainly than midday sun,

Where he did wait,

He that I knew imprinted on my heart,

In place where none appeared." i

"O lamps of fire that shined

With so intense a light,

That those deep caverns where the senses live,

Which were obscure and blind,

Now with strange glories bright,

Both heat and light to his beloved give." 2

Such has been the experience of the truly great saints, and in their lives and in their deaths they have shown forth the fruits of their experience.

1 San Juan de la Cruz: Noche Oscura del Alma: translation by Gabriela Cunningham Graham.

2 San Juan de la Cruz: Llama de Amor Viva: translation by Arthur Symonds.