what we mean when we turn back from the language of
experience to the vocabulary of philosophy and theology and talk about
the absolute values of religion. We mean by "absolute values" that
behind the multifarious and ever changing nature, is a single and a
steadfast cause--a great rock in a weary land. We have lost the old
absolute philosophies and dogmatic theologies and that is good and
right, for they were outworn. But we are never going to lose the
central experience that produced them, and our task is to find a
new philosophy to express these inner things for which the words
"supernatural," "absolute," are no longer intelligible. For we still
know that behind man's partial and relative knowledge, feeling,
willing, is an utter knowledge, a perfect feeling, a serene and
unswerving will; that beneath man's moral anarchy there is moral
sovereignty; that behind his helplessness there is abundant power
to save. Perhaps this Other is always changing, but, if so, it is a
Oneness which is changing. In short, the thing that is characteristic
of religion is that it dwells, not on man's likenesses, but on his
awful differences from nature and from God; sees him not as little
counterparts of deity, but as broken fragments only to be made whole
within the perfect life. It sees relativity as the law of our being,
yes, but relativity, not of the sort that excludes, but is included
in, a higher absolute, even as the planet swings in infinite space.

The trouble with much preaching is that it lacks the essentially
religious insight; in dwelling on man's identities it confuses or
drugs, not clarifies and purges, the spirit. Thus, it obscures the
gulf. Sometimes it evades it, or bridges it by minimizing it, and
genuinely religious people, and those who want to be religious, and
those who might be, know that such preaching is not real and that it
does not move them and, worst of all, the hungry sheep look up and
are not fed. For in such preaching there is no call to humility, no
plea for grace, no sense that the achievement of self-unity is as
much a rescue as it is a reformation. But this sense of the need of
salvation is integral to religion; this is where it has parted company
with humanism. Humanism makes no organic relations between man and
the Eternal. It is as though it thought these would take care of
themselves! In the place of grace it puts pride; pride of caste, of
family, of character, of intellect. But high self-discipli