the
interpretations that we give to them.

So far as the relative importance of these two factors is concerned, we
may see the truth in the application of our thought to happiness. If
there is any area in human experience where the outward circumstance
might be supposed to control the results, it is the realm of happiness;
yet probably nine-tenths of the problem of happiness lies, not in the
outward event, but in the inward interpretation. If we could describe
those conditions in which the happiest people whom we have known have
lived, can any one imagine the diversity of environment that would be
represented in our accounts? Let them move in procession before the
eyes of our imagination, those happy folk whose friendship has been the
benediction of our lives! What a motley company they are! For some
are blind, and some are crippled, and some are invalid; not many are
rich and fortunate; many are poor--a company of handicapped but radiant
spirits whose victorious lives, like the burning bush which Moses saw,
have made in a desert a spot of holy ground. If, now, we ask why it is
that happiness can be so amazingly independent of outward circumstance,
this is the answer: every experience has two factors, the fortune that
befalls and the inward interpretation of it; and, while we often cannot
control the fortune, we always can help with the interpretation. That
is in our power. That is the throne of our sovereignty over our lives.

III

The deep need of a worthy interpretation of life is just as urgent in a
world where the idea of progress reigns as in any other, and to supply
that need is one of the major functions of religion. For religion is
something more than all the creeds that have endeavoured to express its
thought. Religion is something more than all the organizations that
have tried to incarnate its purposes. Religion is the human spirit, by
the grace of God, seeking and finding an interpretation of experience
that puts sense and worth, dignity, elevation, joy, and hope into life.

A body of students recently requested an address upon the subject:
"What is the use of religion anyway?" The group of ideas behind the
question is not hard to guess: that science gives us all the facts,
that facts and their laws are all we need, that the scientific control
of life guarantees progress, and that religion therefore is
superfluous. But in such a statement one towering interrogation has
been neglected: wha