accumulating energies of the new science in its hands, living in the
purlieus of hell because it cannot gain spiritual mastery over the very
power in which it glories. Here is a world which must build its
civilization on spiritual bases or else collapse into abysmal ruin and
which cannot achieve the task though all the motives of
self-preservation cry out to have it done, because men lack the very
elements of faith and character which it is the business of religion to
supply.

VI

We have said that when science has given us all its facts we still need
a spiritual interpretation of the facts; that when science has put all
its energies into our hands we still need spiritual mastery over their
use. Let us say in conclusion that, when science has given us all its
power, we still need another kind of power which it is not the business
of science to supply. Long ago somebody who knew the inner meaning of
religion wrote:

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
He leadeth me beside still waters.
He restoreth my soul."

That last phrase sums up one of the deepest needs of human life. We
are in constant want of spiritual repair; we are lost without a fresh
influx of inward power; we desperately need to have our souls restored.
A young British soldier once came in from the trenches where his
aggressive powers had been in full employ and, having heard one of the
finest concert companies that London could send out, he wrote in a
letter to his family: "I have just come down from the trenches, and
have been listening to one of the best concerts I ever attended. It
makes one feel that perhaps there is a good God after all." The two
aspects of life which that soldier discovered in himself all men
possess. One takes us to life's trenches; the other throws us back on
some revelation of grace and beauty that we may be sure of God. With
one we seek aggressively to master life; with the other we seek
receptively to be inspired. Every normal man needs these two kinds of
influence: one to send him informed and alert to his tasks, the other
to float his soul off its sandbars on the rising tide of spiritual
reassurance and power. Every normal man needs two attitudes: one when
he goes into action determined to do his work and to do it well, and
the other when he subdues his spirit to receptivity and with the
Psalmist cries,

"My soul, wait thou in silence for God only;