e _Here_ and
_Now_ takes the foreground in place of the _Hereafter_. The personal
life in its present relations, the human society under earthly
conditions,--these give to us the main field and problem. The
hereafter of the individual gives background and atmosphere.

For "holy living and dying" we put simply holy living. To give
fullness and perfection to each day, each act, is all and is enough.
The thought of death should not swerve or alter a particle. When the
last hour of life comes, what retrospect shall we wish? Only to have
filled life with the best.

The religious emotion will often and freely personify, and must do so.
The highest feeling takes on a quality of love, and love goes to a
personal object. It is sometimes as toward one divine friend and God,
sometimes toward the one beloved human being, sometimes the Christ,
sometimes a universe of living and loving beings. These are
distinctions of form rather than of substance, the expression by
different minds of the same reality.

To the modern mind, the distinct personification of deity is less
natural than formerly. The very vastness of the Infinite, as we
conceive it, precludes this definite personalizing of it as a habitual
mode of thought or basis of conduct. Yet under lofty and high-wrought
emotion, the yearning of the soul toward the Supreme Power often breaks
spontaneously into the language of personality. In the exquisite sense
of deliverance from sharp trouble,--when the trouble itself seems more
than justified by the heightened gladness, as in Titian's Assumption
the face of the Virgin Mother shines in the welcome of that heaven to
which the way has led through all earthly and motherly sorrow,--in such
emergence, the heart utters again the very words of the Psalmist: "I
love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications.
The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon
me; I found trouble and sorrow. Then called I upon the name of the
Lord, O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul! Gracious is the Lord
and righteous; yea, our God is merciful. Return unto thy rest, O my
soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with me. For thou hast
delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from
falling."

If we would weigh and measure the value of mankind, we have no scales
or measures. As much is to be said for the badness of men as for their
goodness. Still more impossible is it