actually increase the size of the map, and possess a
larger life with God.

CHAPTER I

RELIGION

Religion is experience. It is the response of man's nature to his
highest inspirations. It is his intercourse with Being above himself and
his world.

Religion is _normal_ experience. Its enemies call it "an indelible
superstition," and its friends assert that man is born believing. That a
few persons, here and there, appear to lack the sense for the Invisible
no more argues against its naturalness than that occasionally a man is
found to be colorblind or without an ear for music. Mr. Lecky has
written, "That religious instincts are as truly part of our natures as
are our appetites and our nerves is a fact which all history
establishes, and which forms one of the strongest proofs of the reality
of that unseen world to which the soul of man continually tends."

Some have sought to discredit religion as a surviving childishness. A
baby is dependent upon its parents; and babyish spirits, they say,
never outgrow this sense of dependence, but transfer that on which they
rely from the seen to the unseen. While, however, other childish things,
like ghosts and fairies, can be put away, man seems to be "incurably
religious," and the most completely devout natures, although childlike
in their attitude towards God, give no impression of immaturity. When
one compares Jesus of Nazareth with the leaders in State and Church in
the Jerusalem of His day, He seems the adult and they the children. And
further, those who attempt to destroy religion as an irrational survival
address themselves to the task of a Sisyphus. Although apparently
successful today, their work will have to be done over again tomorrow.
On no other battlefield is it necessary so many times to slay the slain.
Again and again religion has been pronounced obsolete, but passing
through the midst of its detractors it serenely goes its way. When men
laboriously erect its sepulchre, faith,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
Will arise and unbuild it again.

Its indestructible vitality is evidence that it is an inherent element
in human nature, that the unbeliever is a subnormal man.

Religion is an affair of the _whole_ personality. Some have emphasized
the part feeling plays in it. Pascal describes faith as "God felt by the
heart," and Schleiermacher finds the essence of religion in the sense of
utter dependence. Many of us rec