a Protestant sect!

The achievement of a worthy idea of God involves, therefore, the
ability to discover God in all life, outside the Church as well as
within, and in people who do not believe in him nor recognize him as
well as in those who do. Let us consider for a moment the principle
which is here involved. Many forces and persons serve us when we do
not recognize them and do not know the truth about them. This
experience of being ministered to by persons whom we do not know goes
back even to the maternal care that nourished us before we were born.
No mother waits to be recognized before she serves her child. We are
tempted to think of persons as ministering to us only when the service
is consciously received and acknowledged but, as a matter of fact,
service continually comes to us from sources we are unaware of and do
not think about.

"Unnumbered comforts to my soul
Thy tender care bestowed,
Before my infant heart conceived
From whom those comforts flowed."

This principle applies to mankind's relationship with the physical
universe. Through many generations mankind utterly misconceived it.
They thought the earth was flat, the heavens a little way above; yet,
for all that, the sun warmed them and the rain refreshed them and the
stars guided their wandering boats. The physical universe did not wait
until men knew all the truth about it before being useful to men and at
last, when the truth came and the glory of this vast and mobile cosmos
dawned on mankind, men discovered the facts about forces which, though
unknown and unacknowledged, long had served them.

This same principle applies also to man's relationship with social
institutions and social securities that have sustained us from our
infancy. If a boy knows that there is a Constitution of the United
States, he does not think about it. Then maturity comes and he begins
vividly to understand the sacrifices which our forefathers underwent in
building up the institutions that have nourished us. He recognizes
forces and factors of which he had been unconscious but whose value,
long unacknowledged, he now gratefully can estimate.

This same principle also applies to our unconscious indebtedness to
people who have helped us but whom we have not known. This is a far
finer world because of souls who have been here through whom God has
shined like the sun through eastern windows, but we can go on year
after year absorbing unconsciously the