Sin loses half
its dismaying power, and evil is stripped of its terrors, if one
recognizes how far ideal motives enter with controlling influence into
personal life, and to what a degree ideal destinies are already
incarnate in the spirit of great nations.
"However this may be, I find on examination of man's common experience
these three things, which establish, it seems to me, a direct relation
between him and God: this spontaneous gratitude, this trustful
dependence, this noble practice, which is, historically, the Christian
life, and is characterized by its distinctive experiences. They are
simple elements: a faith in God's being which has not cared further to
define the modes of that being; a hope which has not grown to specify
even a Resurrection; a love that has not concentrated itself through
limitation upon any instrumental conversion of the world; but, inchoate
as they are, they remain faith, hope, love--these three. Are they not
sufficient to be the beginnings of the religious life in the young? To
theological learning, traditional creeds, and conventional worship they
may seem primitive, slight in substance, meagre in apparel; but one who
is seeking, not things to believe, but things to live, desires the
elementary.
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