When now we try to express that truth in its simplicity--finding always a great difficulty in putting in articulate words the deep things of the spirit--we say that the man who sees and sorrows for and seeks to escape from his wrong deed or habit may come into the consciousness that he will escape,--may feel with a profound assurance that he is upborne by some power of good which will save him and bless him. He is recoverable; he is lovable; he is loved, and shall be saved. And the way in which that consciousness is awakened is oftenest by the contact of some soul which the sinner reverences as better than himself, which knows his guilt and loves him in spite of it, and declares to him that he shall live and recover. The minister of forgiveness may be a mother or a wife; it may be the sincere priest speaking to the sincere penitent; it may be Christ or Madonna; it may be the unnamed Power whose token is the sunset, or the rainbow, or the voice within the heart. The especial limitation of Christianity at its birth was the expectation of the speedy ending of the existing order. Hence an indifference to such subjects, belonging to permanent human society, as industry, government, knowledge, the control of the forces of nature. As to all these, the limitations of Christianity hindered its progress; as to each, the natural and secular world exercised an influence unconfessed or striven against; as to each, the perception was reached that it must be recognized by religion, until in our day the _Here_ and _Now_ takes the foreground in place of the _Hereafter_. The personal life in its present relations, the human society under earthly conditions,--these give to us the main field and problem. The hereafter of the individual gives background and atmosphere. For "holy living and dying" we put simply holy living. To give fullness and perfection to each day, each act, is all and is enough. The thought of death should not swerve or alter a particle. When the last hour of life comes, what retrospect shall we wish? Only to have filled life with the best. The religious emotion will often and freely personify, and must do so. The highest feeling takes on a quality of love, and love goes to a personal object. It is sometimes as toward one divine friend and God, sometimes toward the one beloved human being, sometimes the Christ, sometimes a universe of living and loving beings. These are distinctions of form rather than of substance, the expression by different minds of the same reality.