Beyond the margin of material life is a spiritual life. This life has been and may still be believed to be the domain of religion, that which science has not known and can never know, which material things have not helped and can never help. It has been the glory of religion to develop the longing to be something higher and nobler by revealing to men the God, Who is higher than themselves. Religion having abdicated this domain to invade that of science has to-day suffered by becoming the slave of æsthetic and moral precepts. Her professors often yield themselves to the influence of form and colour or boast only of their morality and philanthropy. It is no wonder, therefore, that many who are in earnest and feel that neither ritualism nor philanthropy have special power to satisfy their natures, reject religion. But they will not, if they are fair to themselves, object to the strengthening of that power which they must allow to have been a source of noble endeavour and of the very science whose reign they acknowledge. The sense of something better than their best, making itself felt not in outward circumstance but inwardly in their hearts, has often been the spring of effort and of hope. It is because the forms of present-day religion give so little help to strengthen this sense, that so many now speak slightingly of religion and profess their independence of its forms. Religion, in fact, is suffering for want of expression. In other times men felt that the words of the Prayer Book and phrases now labelled “theological” did speak out, or at any rate did give some form to their vague, indistinct longing to be something else and something more; while the picture of God, drawn from the Bible history and Bible words, gave an object to their longing, making them desire to be like Him and to enjoy Him for ever. In these days, however, historical criticism and scientific discoveries have made the old expressions seem inadequate to state man’s longings or to picture God’s character. The words of prayers, whether the written prayers of the English Church or that rearrangement of old expressions called “extempore prayer,” do not at once fit in with the longings of those to whom, in these later days, sacrifice has taken other forms and life other possibilities. The descriptions of God, involving so much that is only marvellous, jar against minds which have had hints of the grandeur of law and which have been awed not by miracles but by holiness. The petitions for the joys of heaven do not always meet the needs of those who have learnt that what they are is of more consequence than what they have, and the anthropomorphic descriptions of the character of God make Him seem less than many men who are not jealous, nor angry, nor revengeful.