So the life is cleansed in
burning light; so the soul is hid in the secret of God's presence. So
men come to themselves; so men lose themselves in the Eternal. There
is perfect freedom at last because we have attained to complete
captivity. There is power accompanied by peace. That is the gift which
the vision of a God, morally separate from, morally other than we,
brings to the inward strife, the spiritual agony of the world. This
is the need which that faith satisfies. It is, I suppose, in this
exulting experience of moral freedom and spiritual peace which comes
to those men who make the experiment of faith that they, for the most
part, find their sufficient proof of the divine reality. Who ever
doubted His existence who could cry with all that innumerable company
of many kindreds and peoples and tongues:
"He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay;
And he set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.
And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God."
Here, then, is the preaching which is religious. How foolish are we
not to preach it more! How trivial and impertinent it is to question
the permanence of the religious interpretation of the world! What
a revelation of personal insignificance it is to fail to revere the
majesty of the devout and aspiring life! That which a starved and
restless and giddy world has lost is this pool of quietness, this
tower of strength, this cleansing grace of salvation, this haven of
the Spirit.
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