nd it is for that reason that when we ask our question about the value
of religion for human life, I think we ought to look for the answer
among these violenter examples rather than among those of a more
moderate hue.

[20] I owe this allegorical illustration to my lamented colleague and
Friend, Charles Carroll Everett.

Having the phenomenon of our study in its acutest possible form to
start with, we can shade down as much as we please later. And if in
these cases, repulsive as they are to our ordinary worldly way of
judging, we find ourselves compelled to acknowledge religion's value
and treat it with respect, it will have proved in some way its value
for life at large. By subtracting and toning down extravagances we may
thereupon proceed to trace the boundaries of its legitimate sway.

To be sure, it makes our task difficult to have to deal so muck with
eccentricities and extremes. "How CAN religion on the whole be the
most important of all human functions," you may ask, "if every several
manifestation of it in turn have to be corrected and sobered down and
pruned away?"

Such a thesis seems a paradox impossible to sustain reasonably--yet I
believe that something like it will have to be our final contention.
That personal attitude which the individual finds himself impelled to
take up towards what he apprehends to be the divine--and you will
remember that this was our definition--will prove to be both a helpless
and a sacrificial attitude. That is, we shall have to confess to at
least some amount of dependence on sheer mercy, and to practice some
amount of renunciation, great or small, to save our souls alive. The
constitution of the world we live in requires it:--

"Entbehren sollst du! sollst entbehren!
Das ist der ewige Gesang
Der jedem an die Ohren klingt,
Den, unser ganzes Leben lang
Uns heiser jede Stunde singt."

For when all is said and done, we are in the end absolutely dependent
on the universe; and into sacrifices and surrenders of some sort,
deliberately looked at and accepted, we are drawn and pressed as into
our only permanent positions of repose. Now in those states of mind
which fall short of religion, the surrender is submitted to as an
imposition of necessity, and the sacrifice is undergone at the very
best without complaint. In the religious life, on the contrary,
surrender and sacrifice are positively espoused: even unnecess