re born. Its existence in us
dignifies us and makes simple, purposeful, and receptive living almost
inevitable. We may not know why we are living according to the dictates
of our inspiration, but we shall live so and that is the important
consideration.

If I urge the acquirement of a religious conception that we may cure
the intolerable distress of worry, I do what I have already warned
against. It is so easy to make this mistake that I have virtually made
it on the same page with my warning. We have no right to seek so great a
thing as religious experience that we may be relieved of suffering.
Better go on with pain and distress than cheapen religion by making it a
remedy. We must seek it for its own sake, or rather, we must not seek it
at all, lest, like a dream, it elude us, or change into something else,
less holy. Nevertheless, it is true that if we will but look with open,
unprejudiced eyes, again and again, upon the sunrise or the stars above
us, we shall become conscious of a presence greater and more beautiful
than our minds can think. In the experience of that vision strength and
peace will come to us unbidden. We shall find our lives raised, as by an
unseen force, above the warfare of conscience and worry. We shall begin
to know the meaning of serenity and of that priceless, if not wholly to
be acquired, possession, the untroubled mind.

I am aware that I shall be misunderstood and perhaps ridiculed by my
colleagues when I attempt to discuss religion in any way. Theology is a
field in which I have had no training, but that is the very reason why I
dare write of it. I do not even assume that there is a God in the
traditional sense. The idea is too great to be made concrete and
literal. No single fact of nature can be fully understood by our finite
minds. But I do feel vaguely that the laws that compass us, and make our
lives possible, point always on--"beyond the realms of time and
space"--toward the existence of a mighty overruling spirit. If this is a
cold and inadequate conception of God, it is at least one that can be
held by any man without compromise.

The modern mind is apt to fail of religious understanding and support,
because of the arbitrary interpretations of religion which are
presented for our acceptance. It is what men say about religion, rather
than religion itself, that repels us. Let us think it out for ourselves.
If we are open to a simple, even primitive, conception of God, we may
still