ngs in
solitary eminence, it is not the testimony of tradition, nor of the
thousands of its living admirers throughout the world, that renders it
beautiful; it makes its own irresistible impression. There are similar
moments for the soul when some word, or character, or event, or
suggestion within ourselves, bows us in admiration before the
incomparably Fair, in shame before the unapproachably Holy, in
acceptance before the indisputably True, in adoration before the
supremely Loving--moments when "belief overmasters doubt, and we know
that we know." At such times the sense of personal intercourse is so
vivid that the believer cannot question that he stands face to face with
the living God.

Such moments, however, are not abiding; and in the reaction that follows
them the mind will question whether it has not been the victim of
illusion. John Bunyan owns: "Though God has visited my soul with never
so blessed a discovery of Himself, yet afterwards I have been in my
spirit so filled with darkness, that I could not so much as once
conceive what that God and that comfort was with which I had been
refreshed." Many a Christian today knows the inspiration and calm and
reinforcement of religion, only to find himself wondering whether these
may not come from an idea in his own head, and not from a personal God.
May we not be in a subjective prison from whose walls words and prayers
rebound without outer effect?

How far may we trust our experience as validating the inferences we draw
from it? The Christian thought of God is after all no more than an
hypothesis propounded to account for the Christian life. May not our
experiences be accounted for in some other way? We must distinguish
between the adequacy of our thought of God and the fact that there is a
God more or less like our thought of Him. Our experience can never
guarantee the entire correctness of our concept of Deity; a child
experiences parental love without knowing accurately who its parents
are--their characters, position, abilities, etc. But the child's
experience of loving care convinces the child that he possesses living
parents. Is it likely that, were God a mere fancy, a fancy which we
should promptly discard if we knew it as such, our experience could be
what it is? An explanation of an experience, which would destroy that
experience, is scarcely to be received as an explanation. Religion is
incomparably valuable, and to account for it as self-hypnosis would e