REAL RELIGION A STRAIGHT WORD ON RELIGION TH HE swift passing of the years can hardly fail to make us thoughtful. What does it all mean this rapid flight of time? Is there any clue to the mystery? Long as life may be, in the case of any of us, it is short at best. Seventy, eighty, even ninety years are a brief span compared with the sweep of eternity. If there is anything certain in this uncertain world it is that we shall not be here long. The vast majority of us will speedily be forgotten. Is there anything that can give dignity and significance to these transient years? Only one answer to this question has satisfied the heart of man. Religion alone, personal religion, gives meaning and glory to life; and the irreligious man, whatever else he may be, honest, kind, generous, fails to grasp life's real riches. I am not speaking now of one religion as distinct from another or of the fine distinctions within the pale of a given religion, say Christianity. I have in mind rather the religious spirit which underlies all religious forms and which often unites those whose outward observances are quite unlike even though they ignore this inner tie. So when I urge a man to be religious I do not ask him first of all to accept my creed or attend my church. I bid him rather connect his life, as he will, with that great force called religion, which he already knows is the secret of the world's progress and the power behind the lives of the best men and women whom the world has ever known. Two or three things I deem to be essential. You must submit your life to this higher power. You must trust and obey it. The heart of religion is some form of submission. You must confess that you are not strong or wise enough to go alone. You must put your ambitions, your hopes, your capacities in the keeping of one worthy to be trusted and loved and served. In other words, you must become a child again and lean hard upon a strength and wisdom that are not your own. There is only one class of persons who can never be truly religious. They are the proud and the self-sufficient. You must cultivate an higher power. Your long or conventional, You must pray. intimacy with this prayers need not be but they ought to be frequent and genuine. No matter if praying comes hard at first, persist and the practise will be easier and increasingly rewarding. Don't stop to theorize or philosophize on the subject, but learn to speak to God as simply and as naturally as children talk to their parents. Not all your prayers will be answered. As you keep on praying you will care less and less for that, but prayer persisted in brings its own assurance that it pays to pray, that a man is not wasting his breath, but is communing with the Almighty. One thing more. The religious mood depends for its sustenance also on the right kind of food. There is a book which looms far above all other books in its power to inform and kindle the spirit of man as he seeks to have commerce with his Creator. I do not claim for the Bible every merit which some of its too zealous friends claim, but I am sure that it is essential to the building up and perfecting of the religious life. Such are some of the basal elements of personal religion. Why not, my friend, have a religion of your own? Why wait till everything is explained? Why be discouraged because you started a long time ago and failed? "ONE WORLD AT A TIME" "HE who E is one of those fellows believes in only one world at a time," commented a sagacious, elderly man upon a youth of marked ability who is, nevertheless, an out and out agnostic. No Epicurean of old ever took more pains to tickle his palate or to please his esthetic sensibilities. His conception of this world where he will probably stay a few years longer is that of an orange from which he should extract all possible savory nutriment, and to which he is under no obligation to contribute anything that makes for its uplift. There are a good many of them - these one-world-at-a-time fellows-and on the surface there is much to justify them in the attitude they take. This is a very good world, a vital, rich, throbbing world which. responds in a wonderful number of ways to our craving for sensuous gratification. Science and invention are multiplying constantly the devices that add to our ease and comfort. We have but to press the 4 |