St. Luke vi. 12.
"He continued all night in Prayer to God."
Last week we looked at the soul as that faculty of life which, to a certain extent, we share with animals; to-day we pass on to consider, under the title of spirit, the higher endowment by which man is enabled to look up and, in the fullest exercise of his whole being, to say "my God."
A man without religion is undeveloped in regard to the highest part of his complex nature. In attaining to self-consciousness, and the special powers it brings, he has gone one step further than the animal, but has utterly failed of his true purpose. The supreme object of the self-consciousness, which reveals to him his personality, is that it should disclose its own origin in the personality of God.
One very striking effect of the War has been to produce a vast amount of testimony to the fact that man is, broadly speaking, religious by nature.
The services in the places of worship all over the land have been multiplied, intercession is becoming a felt reality, congregations have grown.
It is asserted, by those who have the best means of knowing, that by far the majority of the letters from the front contain references to religion, such as acknowledgments of God's providence, prayer for His help, or requests for the prayers of others. Sometimes, in the strange double-sidedness of human nature, accompanied by expletives obviously profane. Mention is often made of the bowed heads, and the prayer, in which both sides join, at the time of a joint burial during a temporary truce.
All these things show that the deeps of the fountains of natural religion have been broken up in wondrous fashion.
Our question to-day is: How shall we discipline that spirit which enables us to realise religion as a fact?
Let us try to get to the root of the matter.