The evolution of life--if it is evolving as we believe it is, and if it is to be viewed with rational insight as an upward process--irresistibly involves and implies some sort of fundamental intelligence and conscious purpose, some Logos steering the mighty movement. We have outgrown crude arguments from "design," and we cannot think of God as a foreign and external Creator, working as a Potter on his clay; but it is irrational to "explain" a steadily unfolding movement, an ever-heightening procession of life, by "fortuitous variations," by "accidental" shifts of level, or even by a blind _elan vital_. If there is an increasing purpose and a clearly culminating drama unfolding in this moving flood of life, then there is some Mind that sees the way, and some Will that directs the march of Life. And this confidence of ours in some divine Event to which the whole creation moves, {xxxviii} this insight that there must be a significant and adequate explanation for the immanent teleology and beauty with which our universe is crammed, is, once more, Reason's postulate of God. There is something in us, indissoluble from Reason itself--a Light, a Word, a Witness as these Spiritual Reformers insisted--which links us in all the deeper processes of self-consciousness with _That Which Is_ and without which "knowledge" would be a mere flux of seemings, a flight of _seriatim_ items. IV When this world's pleasures for my soul sufficed, Ere my heart's plummet sounded depths of pain, I called on reason to control my brain, And scoffed at that old story of the Christ. But when o'er burning wastes my feet had trod, And all my life was desolate with loss, With bleeding hands I clung about the cross, And cried aloud, "Man needs a suffering God."[28] There can be no doubt that the compulsions and implications of rational insight have brought multitudes of men to God, have given them an unescapable conviction of His reality, and have swayed their wills to live in conformity to His perfect Goodness; and it is also true that when for any cause this clue of rationality is missed or lost, men flounder about in the fog and pass through periods of inward tragedy amounting often to despair. But the approach of Reason still leaves much to be desired. It points to something deeper than the transitory flux of things, it raises our minds to some sort of ultimate and self-explanatory Reality, it compels the conviction that there is an all-inclusive Logos--Mind or Spirit--that explains what is and what ought to be, and what in the unfolding course of things is to be; but it does not bring us to a personal God who is our loving Friend and the {xxxix} intimate Companion of our souls, it does not help us solve the mystery of human suffering that lies heavily upon our lives, and it does not bring to our spirits _the saving reinforcement of personal Love_ that must be a central feature of a spiritual and adequate religion.