Now it is just this faith that is so largely pervading the religious world to-day. Spirituality includes all the convictions that constitute ethics. Spirituality is the unchanging quality in all forms of organized religion. And it is found, in greater or in less degree, in every sect and every creed. Outward forms come and go; they multiply, or they decrease, and the change in the expression of religious faith is a matter largely determined by the trend of general progress; but the essentials of religion, under all organized forms, remain the same, for the essential element is spirituality. In and around Copley Square in Boston, within the radius of one block, are several denominations whose order of worship varies, the one from another. The Baptist believes in immersion as the outer sign of the inner newness of life; the Episcopalian holds dear his ritual; the Unitarian and the Presbyterian, and perhaps a half-dozen other sects in close proximity (which express the various forms of what they call "new thought"), each and all exist and have their being by virtue of the one essential faith held in common by all,—the one aim to which all are tending,—that of the spiritualization of life. The larger recognition of the spiritual universe includes the recognition of this interpenetration of the life in the Seen and the Unseen. Every thought and decision is like an action on the spiritual side. A thought has the force of a deed, and there is a literal truth in the line,—
"The good, though only thought, has life and breath;"
and in Lowell's words:—
"Ah! let us hope that to our praise
Good God not only reckons
The moments when we tread His ways,
But when the spirit beckons."
The thought-life is, indeed, the most real of the two lives, and dominates the other. The events and achievements, held in thought and will, precipitate themselves into outer circumstance and action.
To live in this perfect sympathy of companionship with the forces and the powers of the unseen world is to dwell amid perpetual reinforcement of energy, solace, and sustaining aid, and with faith vitalized by spiritual perception.
All scientific problems are ethical, and even spiritual, problems. They are discoveries in the divine laws. "Can man by searching find out God?" Apparently he approaches constantly to this possibility, and finds that
"—through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns."
Every succeeding century brings humanity to a somewhat clearer perception of the nature of the Divine Creation. However slowly, yet none the less surely, does the comprehension of man and his place in the universe and his oneness with the Divine life increase with every century. Jonathan Edwards taught that while Nature might reflect the Divine image, man could not, as he was in a "fallen" state, until he was regenerated. Putting aside the mere dogma involved in the "fall" of man, the other matter—that of regeneration, of redemption—is undeniable, even though we may interpret this process in a different manner from that of the great eighteenth-century theologian. The redemption, the regeneration of man, lies in faith. In that is the substance through which and by means of which man comes into conscious communion with God. It is by the intense activity possible to this mental attitude that he conquers the problems of the universe, that he advances in knowledge, and advances in the increasing capacity to receive the Divine messages and to follow the Divine leadings.