To some of us, indeed, the Christian experiences seem further away than when we took the first steps in the Christian life. That life has not opened out as we had hoped; we do not regret our religion, but we are disappointed with it. There are times, perhaps, when wandering notes from a diviner music stray into our spirits; but these experiences come at few and fitful moments. We have no sense of possession in them. When they visit us, it is a surprise. When they leave us, it is without explanation. When we wish their return, we do not know how to secure it. All which points to a religion without solid base, and a poor and flickering life. It means a great bankruptcy in those experiences which give Christianity its personal solace and make it attractive to the world, and a great uncertainty as to any remedy. It is as if we knew everything about health--except the way to get it. I am quite sure that the difficulty does not lie in the fact that men are not in earnest. This is simply not the fact. All around us Christians are wearing themselves out in trying to be better. The amount of spiritual longing in the world--in the hearts of unnumbered thousands of men and women in whom we should never suspect it; among the wise and thoughtful; among the young and gay, who seldom assuage and never betray their thirst--this is one of the most wonderful and touching facts of life. It is not more heat that is needed, but more light; not more force, but a wiser direction to be given to very real energies already there. The Address which follows is offered as a humble contribution to this problem, and in the hope that it may help some who are "seeking Rest and finding none" to a firmer footing on one great, solid, simple principle which underlies not the Christian experiences alone, but all experiences, and all life. What Christian experience wants is _thread_, a vertebral column, method. It is impossible to believe that there is no remedy for its unevenness and dishevelment, or that the remedy is a secret. The idea, also, that some few men, by happy chance or happier temperament, have been given the secret--as if there were some sort of knack or trick of it--is wholly incredible. Religion must ripen its fruit for every temperament; and the way even into its highest heights must be by a gateway through which the peoples of the world may pass. I shall try to lead up to this gateway by a very familiar path. But as that path is strangely unfrequented, and even unknown, where it passes into the religious sphere, I must dwell for a moment on the commonest of commonplaces. EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES