There is for him a true way of adapting himself to these surrounding facts. He has somehow found it out in the long existence of the race; he has seen it more and more clearly. This true way is expressed by what we call right principles of conduct. It is such traits as we name courage, truth, justice, purity, love, aspiration, reverence. It includes the study of natural laws and conformity to them. It includes the search for knowledge, both for its use and for its own joy. It includes the delighted gaze upon beauty of every kind. Whoever follows this ideal--and just as far as he follows it intelligently and earnestly--finds certain results. Whenever he acts, he finds set before him a right way to follow rather than a wrong. So from every situation he may draw strength. So he may continually find peace,--often peace won through struggle, but the deeper for the struggle. The love of beauty finds beauty everywhere. The love of living creatures finds objects everywhere, and love given brings love in response. This higher life gives joy,--not constant, alternating with sorrow; but the joy is incomparably sweeter and purer and higher than any other course of life yields, and the sorrow has such nobility that we dare not wish it absent from the mingled cup we drain. And always through joy or sorrow may come moral growth--development of character. There is no exemption to be won from suffering, none from fear. Pain, weakness, bereavement, death,--these things must come, and we must sometimes tremble before them,--no divine hand will pluck them away. But in our fear we learn a deeper strength. These are the gifts with which Life answers our faithful service. The brave, the gentle, the peace-makers, the pure in heart, the forgiving, the patient, the heroic, are blessed,--incomparably enriched. This is what we know of the relation of the One Power to ourselves,--that it asks the very highest and best we can give, and returns our service with the best and highest we can receive. This is what that power we name God is to us. This is the same reality which has been apprehended under the figure of a personal God, a Heavenly Father, or a Christ. To many, those figures still express it. But those to whom the Deity is not thus personified may no less fully and vividly apprehend the divine Reality. And further, this whole conception stands no less in stead the persons and the hours when the conscious sense of Deity fails altogether. This conception makes the essence of religion to be conformity to the homely facts about us, in the relations of fidelity, sympathy, and service. When one has no conscious thought of God, or cannot reach such thought if he tries, he can always exercise love, sympathy, admiration, self-control,--and that is enough.