d personal liberty. There is a sense, then,
in which both religion and irreligion are to be justified. If religion
is guilty of unreason, irreligion is guilty of apathy. For without doubt
the situation of the individual man is broadly such as religion conceives
it to be. There is nothing that he can build, nor any precaution that he
can take, that weighs appreciably in the balance against the powers which
decree good and ill fortune, catastrophe and triumph, life and death.
Hence to be without fear is the part of folly. Behold, the fear of the
Lord, that is wisdom.

Religion is man's recognition of the overruling control of his fortunes.
It is neither metaphysical nor mythical, but urgently practical.
Primeval chaos, Chronos, the father of Zeus, and the long line of
speculative Absolutes have no {216} worshippers because they take no hand
in man's affairs. They may be neglected with impunity. But not so the
gods who send health and sickness, fertility and death, victory and
defeat; or He who sits in judgment on the last day to determine the doom
of eternity. Religion is the manifestation of supreme concern for life,
an alertness to the remotest threat of danger and promise of hope. A
certain momentousness attaches to all the affairs of religion, because
everything is at stake. Its dealings are with the last court of appeal,
in behalf of the most indispensable good.

In form, religion is a case of _belief_; that is, of settled conviction.
There is no religion until some interpretation of life, some
accommodation between man and God, has been so far accepted as to be
unhesitatingly practised. The absurdity of doubt in matters of religion
has been pointed out in the well-known parody, "O God, if there be a God,
save my soul, if I have a soul." The quality of religion lies not in the
entertaining of a speculative hypothesis, but in an assurance so
confident that its object is not only thought but enacted. God is not
God until his unquestioned existence is assimilated to life. Indeed, it
is conceivable that an object thus made the basis of action should still
remain theoretically doubtful. To Fontenelle is attributed the remark
that he "did not believe in ghosts, but was afraid of {217} them." This
is a paradox until we distinguish theoretical and practical conviction;
then it becomes not only credible but commonplace. If one prays to God,
it is not necessary for the purposes of religion that one should, in