"_Religion is the effective desire to be in right relations with the Power manifesting itself in the universe._" This has the advantage of treating religion as primarily and essentially a _feeling_, an instinctive desire, and the word "effective," skilfully introduced, suggests that this feeling manifests itself in certain actions undertaken in order to secure a desired end. Again, the phrase "right relations" seems to me well chosen, and better than the "living relation" of M. Reville, which if applied to the religions of antiquity can only be understood in a sacramental sense, and is not obviously so intended. "Right relation" will cover all religious feeling, from the most material to the most spiritual. Think for a moment of the 119th Psalm, the high-water mark of the religious feeling of the most religious people of antiquity; it is a magnificent declaration of conformity to the will of God, _i.e._ of the desire to be in right relation to Him, to His statutes, judgments, laws, commands, testimonies, righteousness. This is religion in a high state of development; but our definition is so skilfully worded as to adapt itself readily to much earlier and simpler forms. The "Power manifesting itself in the universe" may be taken as including all the workings of nature, which even now we most imperfectly understand, and which primitive man so little understood that he misinterpreted them in a hundred different ways. The effective desire to be in right relation with these mysterious powers, so that they might not interfere with his material well-being--with his flocks and herds, with his crops, too, if he were in the agricultural stage, with his dwelling and his land, or with his city if he had got so far in social development--this is what we may call the religious instinct, the origin of what the Romans called _religio_.[8] The effective desire to have your own will brought into conformity to the will of a heavenly Father is a later development of the same feeling; to this the genuine Roman never attained, and the Greek very imperfectly.