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it for us as a piece of folly. Can life's highest values be so dealt
with? Moreover, we cannot settle down comfortably in unbelief; just when
we feel most sure that there is no God, something unsettles us, and
gives us an uncanny feeling that after all He is, and is seeking us. We
find ourselves responding, and once more we are strengthened,
encouraged, uplifted. Can a mere imagination compass such results?

How shall we test the validity of the inference we draw from our
experience?

One test is the satisfaction that it gives to _all_ elements in our
complex personality. One part of us may be deceived, but that which
contents the entire man is not likely to be unreal. Arthur Hallam
declared that he liked Christianity because "it fits into all the folds
of one's nature." Further, this satisfaction is not temporary but
persistent. In childhood, in youth, in middle age, at the gates of
death, in countless experiences, the God we infer from our spirit's
reactions to Him meets and answers our changing needs. Matthew Arnold
writes: "Jesus Christ and His precepts are found to hit the moral
experience of mankind; to hit it in the critical points; to hit it
lastingly; and, when doubts are thrown upon their really hitting it,
then to come out stronger than ever." Unless we are to distrust
ourselves altogether, that which appeals to our minds as reasonable, to
our hearts as lovable, to our consciences as commanding, and to our
souls as adorable, can hardly be "such stuff as dreams are made on."

Nor are we looking at ourselves alone. We are confirmed by the completer
experiences of the generations who have preceded us. "They looked unto
Him and were radiant." Those thousands of beautiful and holy faces in
each century, "lit with their loving and aflame with God," can scarcely
have been gazing on light kindled solely by their own imaginations.

And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images,
And grows to something of great constancy.

Religion has written its witness into the world's history, and we can
appeal to an eloquent past.

Look at the generations of old, and see:
Who did ever put his trust in the Lord, and was ashamed?
Or who did abide in His fear, and was forsaken?
Or who did call upon Him, and He despised him?

And its witness comes from today as certainly, and more widely, than
from any believing yesterday. Ten thousand times ten thousand, and
thousands of t