to enable us
seriously to take in hand the disciplining of the soul, remembering that
this life of ours is a precious loan entrusted to us by God the Father,
redeemed for us by God the Son, sanctified in us by God the Holy Ghost,
to be used by us, in due proportion, for our neighbours and ourselves.

_For suggested meditations during the week, see Appendix_.

IV

=The Discipline of the Spirit=

THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT

St. Luke vi. 12.

"He continued all night in Prayer to God."

Last week we looked at the soul as that faculty of life which, to a
certain extent, we share with animals; to-day we pass on to consider,
under the title of spirit, the higher endowment by which man is enabled
to look up and, in the fullest exercise of his whole being, to say
"my God."

A man without religion is undeveloped in regard to the highest part of
his complex nature. In attaining to self-consciousness, and the special
powers it brings, he has gone one step further than the animal, but
has utterly failed of his true purpose. The supreme object of the
self-consciousness, which reveals to him his personality, is that it
should disclose its own origin in the personality of God.

One very striking effect of the War has been to produce a vast amount of
testimony to the fact that man is, broadly speaking, religious by
nature.

The services in the places of worship all over the land have been
multiplied, intercession is becoming a felt reality, congregations have
grown.

It is asserted, by those who have the best means of knowing, that by
far the majority of the letters from the front contain references to
religion, such as acknowledgments of God's providence, prayer for His
help, or requests for the prayers of others. Sometimes, in the strange
double-sidedness of human nature, accompanied by expletives obviously
profane. Mention is often made of the bowed heads, and the prayer, in
which both sides join, at the time of a joint burial during a temporary
truce.

All these things show that the deeps of the fountains of natural
religion have been broken up in wondrous fashion.

Our question to-day is: How shall we discipline that spirit which
enables us to realise religion as a fact?

Let us try to get to the root of the matter.

There are two chief derivations of the word religion. One comes from the
verb which means "to go through, or over again, in reading, speech, or
thought." Hence religion is the regular or const