"Of the many Gods, or conceptions of God, that are offered me, the only one I am concerned to believe in, and should find it a calamity not to believe in, is the God who is sympathetic, and _actively_ sympathetic, on the lines of my determination to achieve a better-than-what-is. Omnipotence and Omniscience I could dispense with if need be; the disappearance of the Cosmic Potentate would not leave me orphaned; the Absolute does not enthral me and I should suffer no nightmare were I to learn that it did not exist. But were I forced to admit that the universe, as a whole, is quite indifferent to this desire of mine to achieve a better-than-what-is, that there is nothing in its nature which shares my interest in that matter, nothing there that backs me up, nothing to which the failure or success of my attempt makes the slightest difference, then indeed a dark and cruel blight would fall upon my soul. "To that blight I may have to submit. But I will not submit until I have tested the universe in the only way that is open to me. I will trust it as a friend. There are those about me who say that my trust will not be betrayed, having made the same experiment themselves. They remind me that the world I am living in is not _any_ kind of world, but just the one particular kind needed by a soul whose business it is to create new values, in the way of Truth, Beauty and Goodness; that its laws, forces and material readily lend themselves to the purpose of anyone who will use them for that high creative end, turning out, in fact, to be the very kind of laws, forces and material which such an one needs. Well then, I will see. I will base my life on the assumption that somewhere, in the height above or in the depth below, Power is waiting to back me up. That Power, if I find it, shall be my God. Is it not reasonable to suppose that, if it exists, it will find some means of making me aware of its presence? That then shall be my experiment, and I will abide by the result." A person who reasons with himself in this manner is taking the most practical, and the wisest means I know of to determine the question whether God exists. For my own part I should view his experiment with hope proportioned to his sincerity. Frankly, I should expect him to make discovery of the Living God, as a reality, as a companion, as a friend. Whether to the reality, companion, friend, so discovered he gave the name "God," or some other name, I should not regard as a matter of supreme importance. If he chose to call it Christ, or more simply "the Spirit," I should not quarrel with him. The discovery is far too momentous to be imperilled for a name. Its value lies not in its name but in its _reality_. "Few things are easier," says John Henry Newman, "than to use the name of God and mean nothing by it." Call it then by a name which means something, and not by a name which means nothing.