cries.
"Through the power that is given me, through the fellowship I have with
the heart of a Divine universe, I can turn that evil into good, and
transfigure that sorrow into joy, and draw the stream of a deeper life
from the very thing that threatens to slay me. Now is the time, here
is the place, to show my Divine Creator that he has not made me for
nothing! For this cause was I born and for this hour came I into the
world."

On the surface of things there is discord, confusion and want of
adaptation; but dig down, first to the centre of the world, and then to
the centre of your own nature, and you will find a most wonderful
correspondence, a most beautiful harmony, between the two--the world
made for the hero and the hero made for the world.

Whoever embarks on the task of religious inquiry, which is tantamount
to inquiry into the meaning of his life--a question he would have no
interest in asking unless he were fundamentally a religious
being,--whoever embarks on this task will find the ground encumbered
with a multitude of preconceptions which warp the mind at every point
and render independent judgment extremely difficult. Unless the
inquirer keeps a watch upon himself his mind will run in a groove from
the outset. And when he has followed his groove as far as it goes and
found _nothing_ at the end of it, he will conclude that religion has
broken down. But in nine cases out of ten he will perceive, if he
reflects on what has happened, that the groove which has led to this
result was cut by minds not primarily interested in religion but bent
on protecting some quite alien interest, possibly a vested interest,
institutional or political, to which religion had proved itself
serviceable.

The most obstinate of these misconceptions, and the deepest of the
grooves in which they run, are those connected with the term "God."

There is no worldly interest which has not been anxious to secure God
for an ally. In all ages the attempt has been made to domesticate the
idea of God to the secular purposes of individuals and of groups. If
we examine the current forms of the idea we may observe the marks of
this domesticating process at many points. For example, the idea of
God as the sovereign potentate, governing the universe under a system
of iron law, the legislator of nature and the taskmaster of the soul,
the rewarder of them that obey and the punisher of them that disobey,
is plainly an idea borrowed from p