onfidence and peace.

That the God with whom, starting from the hither side of our own
extra-marginal self, we come at its remoter margin into commerce should
be the absolute world-ruler, is of course a very considerable
over-belief. Over-belief as it is, though, it is an article of almost
every one's religion. Most of us pretend in some way to prop it upon
our philosophy, but the philosophy itself is really propped upon this
faith. What is this but to say that Religion, in her fullest exercise
of function, is not a mere illumination of facts already elsewhere
given, not a mere passion, like love, which views things in a rosier
light. It is indeed that, as we have seen abundantly. But it is
something more, namely, a postulator of new FACTS as well. The world
interpreted religiously is not the materialistic world over again, with
an altered expression; it must have, over and above the altered
expression, a natural constitution different at some point from that
which a materialistic world would have. It must be such that different
events can be expected in it, different conduct must be required.

This thoroughly "pragmatic" view of religion has usually been taken as
a matter of course by common men. They have interpolated divine
miracles into the field of nature, they have built a heaven out beyond
the grave. It is only transcendentalist metaphysicians who think that,
without adding any concrete details to Nature, or subtracting any, but
by simply calling it the expression of absolute spirit, you make it
more divine just as it stands. I believe the pragmatic way of taking
religion to be the deeper way. It gives it body as well as soul, it
makes it claim, as everything real must claim, some characteristic
realm of fact as its very own. What the more characteristically divine
facts are, apart from the actual inflow of energy in the faith-state
and the prayer-state, I know not. But the over-belief on which I am
ready to make my personal venture is that they exist. The whole drift
of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present
consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that
exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences which have
a meaning for our life also; and that although in the main their
experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two become
continuous at certain points, and higher energies filter in. By being
faithful in my poor measure to