But we see the invisible in our common daily life much more than we realize. The simple cobbler of shoes stitches and pegs at his little shoe, and makes it as honestly as he can, for some child whom he has never seen and perhaps never will see. The merchant expands his business because he forecasts the expanding need for his articles in China, Africa, or South America. The statesman at every move is dealing as much with the country of his inner vision as with the country his eyes see. So, too, is the parent as he plans for the discipline and education of his child. No one can be a good person—however simple, or however great—without leaving the things that are behind, _i.e._ the things that are actual, and going on to realize what is not yet apprehended, what exists only in forecast and vision. Religion, then, is not alone in demanding the supreme faculty of seeing the invisible. We live on all life-levels by faith, by assent to realities which are not there for our eyes. Religion only demands of us that we _see_ the whole Reality which this visible fragment of nature implies, that we _see_ the larger spirit which our own human spirits call for, that we _see_ the eternal significance revealed in the life of Christ and in the conquests of His spirit through the ages. CHAPTER V A FUNDAMENTAL SPIRITUAL OUTLOOK The most important constructive work just now laid upon us is the serious task of helping to restore faith in the actual reality of God and in the fundamental spiritual nature of our world. There is no substitute for the transforming power and inward depth which an irresistible first-hand conviction of God gives a man. Carlyle, in his usual vivid fashion, says that one man with faith in God is “stronger, not than ten men that have it not, or than ten thousand, but than _all_ men that have it not!” A man can face anything when he knows absolutely that at bottom the universe is not force nor mechanism but intelligent and loving purpose, and that through the seeming confusion and welter there is a loving, throbbing, personal Heart answering back to us. The cultivation of this experience is the greatest prophetic mission laid upon the spiritual leaders of any age. Isaiah is at his fullest stature when in a fearful crisis he calls his nation from a military _alliance_ with Egypt, whose people, he says, are “men and not God and whose horses are flesh and not spirit,” to a _reliance_ on God and on eternal resources: “In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” George Fox is most clearly a prophet when he reports his own experience of God: “I saw that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but that an infinite ocean of light and love flowed over the ocean of darkness. In _that_ I saw the infinite love of God.”