" Consciousness is the one fixed point in this boundless
and bottomless gulf of things, and the soul's inward law, as it has been
painfully elaborated by human history, the only revelation of God.
The only but the sufficient revelation! For this first article of a
reasonable creed is the key to all else--the clue which leads the mind
safely through the labyrinth of doubt into the presence of the Eternal.
Without attempting to define the indefinable, the soul rises from the
belief in the reality of love and duty to the belief in "a holy will at
the root of nature and destiny"--for "if man is capable of conceiving
goodness, the general principle of things, which cannot be inferior to
man, must be good." And then the religious consciousness seizes on this
intellectual deduction, and clothes it in language of the heart, in the
tender and beautiful language of faith. "There is but one thing
needful--to possess God. All our senses, all our powers of mind and
soul, are so many ways of approaching the Divine, so many modes of
tasting and adoring God. Religion is not a method; it is a life--a
higher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in its
fruits; a communion with God, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which
radiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows.
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