They are not peculiar to what we usually call religion. The experience of love between man and woman opens a new world. So does music; so do all the finer forms of happiness.
All these, when they come, are felt as gifts,—as revelations. They are not within our direct and immediate command.
What relation do they bear to the life which is within our command,—to our deliberate, purposeful, self-ordered life? First, in that life we cultivate the two traits which fit us for the vision, though they do not command it,—sensitiveness and self-control.
So no man or woman can foresee whether the love of wedlock shall come to them, but each can render himself worthy of love, and no high experience of love is possible except to one trained long beforehand in purity and unselfishness.
Next, these higher moods, when they come, should be accepted as giving law to the unillumined hours. They do not change, but they intensify, the aim at rightness of life, and they add to it the spirit of courage, of trust, of joy.
The hope of immortality—the assurance of some good beyond, which we express by "immortality"—is born from a sense of the value of life. Life is felt to be precious as it is consecrated by the moral struggle in ourselves, and as it is viewed in others with sympathy. We give our moral effort and our sympathy, and these are encountered by the tremendous play of human joys and sorrows, and the result is a sense of life as intensely significant.
The feeling of communion with Christ, with angels and saints,—its natural basis is the reverence and love for great souls. As such reverence and love is deep, and as death removes the objects, the sense of a continued communion arises spontaneously. No form of our consciousness is more vivid and profound than this. It has a background of mystery,—mystery scarcely deeper or other than that which envelops the earthly love. What do I love in the friend whom here I see? Is it the individuality, or that higher power of which it transmits a ray?
The sense of this blending of the human and divine does not weaken or perplex our affection for the friend we see; it intensifies and sublimates it. So, in the sense of communion with the unseen friend, it disturbs us not that we cannot say how much is there of the remembered personality, how much of the one eternal deity. The essence of what we loved and love is sure and undying.
The creature succeeds as its functions and organs become fitted to its environment. Man succeeds as he fits himself to a moral environment. To the undeveloped man the world is full of forces which are hostile or indifferent to his right action; a thousand things distract him from doing right; he is like a creature in a watery world with half-developed fins. But as a man becomes morally developed he finds moral opportunity everywhere,—finds occasion for service, for admiration, gratitude, reverence, hope. This moral development includes the whole man: he needs a good body; he needs much that only inheritance can supply. His own effort is one factor, not the sum of factors. We must be patient with ourselves,—accept our inevitable imperfections as part of the grand plan, and find a joy in what is above and beyond ourselves.
Man first solves the problem of his own life,—finds the key in devotion to the highest ideal of character,—finds the answer in moral growth following his effort, forgiveness meeting his repentance, human love answering his love, beauty meeting his desire, truth opening to his search, a support and assurance found in emergency.