Now here we have reached a parting of ways. For we have touched the point at which the distinctions start out between what is secular and what is sacred--between virtue and godliness--between the world and the Church. If 'Religion' means this coming forward into the foreground of that which is the universal background of all existence, then we cut ourselves free from the perplexity which benumbs us when we hear of the 'Gospel of the Secular Life;' of the 'Religion of Humanity;' of doctors and scientific professors being 'Ministers of Religion;' of the 'Natural Religion' which is contained within the borders of science with its sense of wonder, or of art with its vision of beauty. All this is so obviously true in one sense that it sinks to the level of an amiable commonplace; but if this be the sense intended, why is all this emphasis laid upon it? Yet if more than this is meant, we are caught in a juggling maze of words, and are losing hold on vital distinctions, and feel ourselves to be rapidly collapsing into the condition of the unhappy Ninevites, who knew not their right hands from their left. The word 'Religion,' after all, has a meaning: and we do not get forward by labouring to disguise from ourselves this awkward fact. This positive meaning allows everything that can be asked in the way of sanctity and worth, for nature and the natural life. All of it is God-given, God-inspired, God-directed; all of it is holy. But the _fact_ of this being so is one thing: the _recognition_ of it is another; and it is this recognition of God in things which is the core and essence of religion. Natural life is the life in God, which has not yet arrived at this recognition: it is not yet, as such, religious. The sacred and supernatural office of man is to press through his own natural environment, to force his spirit through the thick jungle of his manifold activities and capacities, to shake himself free from the encompassing complexities, to step out clear and loose from all entanglement, to find himself, through and beyond all his secular experiences, face to face with a God, Who, on His side, is for ever pushing aside the veil which suggests and conceals Him, for ever disengaging Himself from the phenomena through which He arrives at man's consciousness, for ever brushing away the confusions, and coming out more and more into the open, until, through and past the 'thunder comes a human voice;' and His eyes burn their way through into man's soul; and He calls the man by his name, and takes him apart, and hides him in some high and separate cleft of the rock, far from all the glamour and tumult of crowded existence, and holds him close in the hollow of His hand as He passes by, and names to him, with clear and memorable voice, the 'Name of the Lord, the Lord God, merciful, gracious, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, and Who will by no means clear the guilty.' Here is Religion.