the life itself, then
only is that direct relation of man with God, this vital certainty in
living truth,--living in us,--this personal religion, possible.

"What has reform in religion ever been other than the demolition of the
interfering barriers, the deposit of the past, between man and God? The
theory of the office of the Holy Spirit in the Church expresses man's
need of direct contact with the divine; the doctrine of
transubstantiation symbolizes it; and what is Puritanism in all ages,
affirming the pure spirit, denying all forms, but the heart of man in
his loneliness, seeking God face to face? what is its iconoclasm of
image and altar, of prayer-book and ritual, of the Councils and the
Fathers, but the assertion of the noble dignity in each individual soul
by virtue of which it demands a freeman's right of audience, a son's
right of presence with his father, and believes that such is God's way
with his own? This immediacy of the religious life, being once accepted
as the substance of vitality in it, relieves man at once of the greater
mass of that burden in which scepticism thrives and labours. The
theories of the past respecting God's government, no longer possible in
a humaner and Christianized age, the impaired genuineness of the
Scriptures and all questions of their text and accuracy, even the great
doctrine of miracles, cease to be of vital consequence. A man may
approach divine truth without them. Simple and bare as the spiritual
life here presented is, it is not open to such sceptical attack, being
the fundamental revelation of God bound up in the very nature of man
which has been recognized at so many critical times, in so many places
and ages, as the inward light. We may safely leave dogma and historical
criticism and scientific discovery on one side; it is not in them that
man finds this inward wisdom, but in the religious emotions as they
naturally arise under the influence of life.

"This view is supported rather than weakened by such records of the
spiritual life in man as we possess. Man's nature is one; and, just as
it is interpreted and illuminated by the poets from whom we derive
direction in our general conduct, it is set forth and illustrated by
saintly men and holy women in the special sphere of the soul's life with
God. Our nature is one with theirs; but as there are differences in the
aptitudes, sensibilities, and fates of all men, so is it with spiritual
faculties and their growth; and, f