for the attack upon the powers of darkness and of
spiritual wickedness, in high places and in low.

The defence of religion has been overdone. We have cooped up the faith
in theological fortresses, surrounding it with an immense array of
outworks--creeds, dogmas, apologetics, institutions--and we have used
up our resources in holding our "positions" against one another when we
ought to have been attacking the common enemy in the open field. These
outworks and defences, intended to save us from perplexity, have become
a greater source of perplexity than all the rest. It takes a lifetime
to understand them, and when understood most of them turn out futile.

It is the fashion nowadays to express alarm about the future of
religion. Hardly a day passes but we hear some utterance, read some
document, which sounds that note. But look closely and you will often
discover that what these people are really alarmed about is not
religion itself, but one or other of the entrenched camps in which
religion has been cooped up. Where is the church, where is the sect,
where is the creed-bolstered institution, unhampered by the cares of
these great fortresses? And indeed they are not safe. There is no
place on earth where a man's soul is less safe than when it immures
itself in one of these masterpieces of military architecture, mostly
mediaeval. We live in an age of long-range artillery and of high
explosives.

Are you then in search of a religion which will relieve you of
perplexity, remove peril out of your path, and surround your soul with
an unassailable rampart against doubt? I have to confess that I know
of none such. But I know of at least one religion which does far
greater things than these.

In the first place, the religion I am thinking of brings all our
perplexities to a focus; lifts them up on high; concentrates them on
two or three burning points, and shows us with a clearness that admits
of no mistaking what a tremendous mystery we are up against in life.

That is the first thing that a true religion does. But if it did that
only, it would do us no good but harm, for it would overwhelm us. So
it does the second. While on the one hand it reveals to us, as I have
said, the deep and amazing mystery of our existence, on the other it
reveals something yet deeper and more amazing in ourselves, something
divine in everyone of us, which is more than a match for what it has to
face. A true religion does both thi