to restore." Is not all the spring of benevolent
effort, then, in this single proposition of Religion? This one great
Truth it utters amidst the suffering and injustice of the world--that
men are heirs of one inheritance; possessors of a birthright by virtue
of which all outward inequalities fade away. It bases a demand for
mutual help and love, upon the fact that we are all on a
pilgrimage--high, low, honored, degraded, master, slave, we go forth
together, and these earthly distinctions all drop away. Rich man with
rows of real-estate, with money safe in bank, with solid securities
walled around you--you will carry no more away than Lazarus yonder--in
God's eyes you are no richer than he. Because here we have no continuing
city. The destinies of our common humanity flow forward into another and
more enduring one.

And, if still this problem of human degradation and suffering presses
upon us, I say further, that where the constituents of this problem are
most prominent, there religion is the most active. The heaviest poverty
is belted about by the brightest charities; the hot-beds of crime
generate the most radical efforts for its prevention and its cure; and
while oppression is at work, setting its dark types upon virgin soil to
print off its own shame and condemnation, indignant voices expose it and
indignant hearts react against it. And more and more, every day, it is
felt and proclaimed that religion is a working-principle--a practical
power. Never was it more profoundly felt than in this very age that men
must be confessors of Christianity as well as professors. And in the
light of this conception, proffering fresh and willing help, Religion
walks abroad; and lo! waste places grow verdant, and the strongholds of
guilt and misery sink down, and blessed institutions rise up, and
industry takes the place of crime, and cursings are exchanged for songs,
and the poorest sees the immortal light, and is lifted up by the grand
thought--that "here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to
come."

We have thus seen that Religion is a Help as to the fact of sin, when
men are convinced of it as a great reality; and a help as to the fact of
human suffering, because it is a working-power. But, over and above all
this, there are problems that perplex us, and demand some answer;
problems as to the How, and the Wherefore, and the End. There are times
when our thoughts rise above all specific instances, and we take up
humanit