rain, for harvest, and victory over all their enemies--that they are
battling with the darkness and that they have not turned entirely away
from the light of His countenance who is never at any time far from any
one of us. Their heart within them is ready to bear witness. Religion
is present in them, if only under "the guise of desire"; but it is "the
desire of all nations" for which they yearn.

There are, Hoeffding says, "two tendencies in the nature of religious
feeling: on the one hand there is the need to collect and concentrate
ourselves, to resign ourselves, to feel ourselves supported and carried
by a power raised above all {174} struggle and opposition and beyond
all change. But within the religious consciousness another need makes
itself felt, the need of feeling that in the midst of the struggle we
have a fellow-struggler at our side, a fellow-struggler who knows from
his own experience what it is to suffer and meet resistance" (_The
Philosophy of Religion_, Sec. 54). Between these two tendencies Hoeffding
discovers an opposition or contradiction, an "antinomy of religious
feeling." But it is precisely because Christianity alone of all
religions recognises both needs that it transcends the antinomy. The
antinomy is indeed purely intellectual. Hoeffding himself says, "only
when recollection, collation, and comparison are possible do we
discover the opposition or the contradiction between the two
tendencies." And in saying that, inasmuch as recollection, collation,
and comparison are intellectual processes, he admits that the antinomy
is intellectual. That it is not an antinomy of religious feeling is
shown by the fact that the two needs exist, that is to say, are both
felt. To say _a priori_ that both cannot be satisfied is useless in
face of the fact that those who feel them find that Christianity
satisfies them.

{175}

SACRIFICE

In my last lecture I called attention to the fact that the subject of
prayer has been strangely neglected by the science of religion.
Religion, in whatever form it manifests itself, is essentially
practical; man desires to enter into communication or into communion
with his god, and in so doing he has a practical purpose in view. That
purpose may be to secure a material blessing of a particular kind, such
as victory in war or the enjoyment of the fruits of the earth in their
due season, or the purpose may be to offer thanks for a harvest and to
pray for a cont