thizing with all human aspiration, pitiful to all human weakness and
sorrow, inspiring to all effort and hope and trust. That sentiment is
surely a blessed revelation to those in whom it exists,--the warm and
living symbol of an eternal reality.

To many, the disclosure of God is made in some way especially personal to
themselves. Very often some human friend is the best manifestation and
assurance of divinity. Our faith leans on the faith of the best and most
loving person we have known. Sometimes the heart's natural language is
"My father's God," "my mother's God." With some, the life beyond death
first becomes real to consciousness when the heart's treasure has been
taken there. Sometimes, in looking upon one's own life, one becomes
deeply conscious of the higher guidance that has led it. There are hours
in which past sorrows shine out as heavenly messengers of good. There
dawns upon us a sense of the blessedness that life has held; all its
highest experiences become instinct with the suggestion of a celestial
meaning that we as yet but half apprehend. We escape for the moment from
the thralldom of self; personal happiness merges in something higher; we
are glad and still in the sense of a divine Will working in us and in all
things. In such hours the soul says, "_My_ God."

There is infinite variety of personal experience; "so many kinds of
voices in the world, and none of them without signification." One man
has been deep in drunkenness and debauchery, he has grown reckless and
hopeless; but through some friendly voice there reaches him an impulse to
a new and successful effort; there comes in upon him the sense of a
divine love; a mighty forgiving and restoring force seems to seize him
and draw him back to life. In his religion thereafter there may be the
glowing emotion of one who has been forgiven much and loves much.
Another man walks always in steady allegiance to conscience and right,
and never has any rapturous emotions; is not he, too, the child of God?
We dislike the prodigal's elder brother for his jealousy; but his
father's word to him, despite that touch of unworthiness, was: "Son, thou
art ever with me, and all that I have is thine."

One whose life flows with smooth current may find the significance of
religion in duty rather than in trust. To such a one God may appear as
an ideal, inspiring conduct, but not as a power, controlling events. But
upon him, it may be, there breaks some grea