deeper, internal aspect of a man, instead of judgment according to the
superficial, outward aspect. For the will is the center and core of
personality. What a man desires and strives for with all his heart,
that he is. What he repents of and repudiates with the whole strength of
his frail and imperfect nature, that he has ceased to be.

Thus religion, or whole-souled devotion to God, gives a sense of
completeness, and attainment, and security, and peace, which mere
ethics, or adjustment to the separate fragmentary objects which
constitute our environment, can never give. The moral life is from its
very nature partial, fragmentary, and finite. The religious life by
penitence and faith and hope and love, rises above the finite with its
limitations, and the temporal with its sins and failings, and lays hold
on the infinite ideal and the eternal goodness, with its boundless
horizon and its perfect peace. The religious life, like the moral, is
progressive. But, as Principal Caird remarks, "It is progress, not
towards, but within, the infinite." Union with God in sincere devotion
to his holy will, is the "promise and potency" of harmonious relations
with that whole ethical and spiritual universe which his thought and
will includes.

THE REWARD.

+The reward of communion with God and comprehensive righteousness of
conduct is spiritual life.+--The righteous man, the man who walks with
God, is in principle and purpose identified with every just cause, with
every step of human progress, with every sphere of man's well-being. To
him property is a sacred trust, time a golden opportunity, truth a
divine revelation, Nature the visible garment of God, humanity a holy
brotherhood, the family, society, and the state are God-ordained
institutions, with God-given laws. Through the one fundamental devotion
of his heart and will to God, the religious man is made a partaker in
all these spheres of life in which the creative will of God is
progressively revealed. All that is God's belong to the religious man.
For he is God's child. And all these things are his inheritance.

To the religious man, therefore, there is open a boundless career for
service, sacrifice, devotion and appropriation. Every power, every
affection, every aspiration within him has its counterpart in the
outward universe. The universe is his Father's house; and therefore his
own home. All that it contains are so many opportunities for the
development and realization