Science with its passion for truth, art with its passion for beauty, ethics with its passion for rightness, are all but parts of true religion, the soul's passion for the infinite heart and mind in which all ideas of truth and beauty take their rise and find their full realization. The soul of man never has ceased to cry out for the living God; the religion of fear has given it no satisfaction. Its followers have been too busy building themselves shelters from the heaven they dread, shelters that become as leaden shields shutting out the eternal tenderness and beneficence. No man ever found the celestial city or its glorious king so long as he regarded his religion as a cyclone cellar. To those who, with eyes of reverence, seek to find the good in all things here, believing that love is better and mightier than hate, that whatever is good, kindly, tender, pure, and ennobling in us, is but the reflection from the glory of the infinite, traces in our dust by which we find our way to Him who inhabits eternity, these, through eyes of faith, have found a presence beyond description or definition. Fear sets afar off a mighty monarch; faith finds near at hand one whom it calls "Father." Fear shrinks from the impending wrath, love rests in the unchanging goodness. Fear imagines a throne and flaming sword; faith has confidence in a better day ever dawning, in the triumph at last of right, in the reality of an incomprehensible love that sings in its joy, soothes in its sorrow, strengthens in its discipline, a life and love nearer and more real than any of the other facts of living. FAITH FOR THE FUTURE You cannot tell much about a man's faith by his willingness to deal in futures without any foundation in fact. And yet no man is ready to face the future unless his heart is nerved by a high and worthy faith. This alone can give strength to look down the coming days and to take up their tasks. None of us can know what these new days hold for us; fear readily conjures up pictures of disaster. But because of certain sublime confidences we hold we banish our fears, shake off our sloth, and gladly step out into the unknown and untrodden country of to-morrow. Faith is the force of all the ages. It accounts for the past; it enters and determines the future. Because certain men in days gone by believed certain things intensely; because they were thrilled by great visions, by glorious ideals, history was wrought out in the forge of their convictions, under the hammer of their wills. No great things are done except by the power of faith, under glowing hopes and compelling convictions. It is her faith in her boy's future that makes the mother willing to suffer, keeps her patient, that buoys up the father in the strife and weariness of life. No man or woman is doing anything that makes the world richer for mere bread and butter; some purpose and vision is behind the worthy work.