The religious sentiment has been shown to be the expression of unfulfilled desire, but this desire peculiar as dependent on unknown power. Material advantages do not gratify it, nor even spiritual joy when regarded as a personal sentiment. Preservation by and through relation with absolute intelligence has appeared to be the meaning of that “love of God” which alone yields it satisfaction. Even this is severed from its received doctrinal sense by the recognition of the speculative as above the numerical unity of that intelligence, and the limitation of personality which spiritual thought demands. The eternal laws of mind guarantee perpetuity to the extent they are obeyed--and no farther. They differ from the laws of force in that they convey a message which cannot be doubted concerning the purport of the order in nature, which is itself “the will of God.” That message in its application is the same which with more or less articulate utterance every religion speaks--Seek truth: do good. Faith in that message, confidence in and willing submission to that order, this is all the religious sentiment needs to bring forth its sweetest flowers, its richest fruits. Such is the ample and satisfying ground which remains for the religion of the future to build upon. It is a result long foreseen by the clearer minds of Christendom. One who more than any other deserves to be classed among these writes: “Resignation to the will of God is the whole of piety. * * * Our resignation may be said to be perfect when we rest in his will as our end, as being itself most just and right and good. Neither is this at bottom anything more than faith, and honesty and fairness of mind; in a more enlarged sense, indeed, than these words are commonly used.”[277-1] Goethe, who studied and reflected on religious questions more than is generally supposed, saw that in such a disposition of mind lie the native and strongest elements of religion. In one of his conversations with Chancellor Müller, he observed: “Confidence and resignation, the sense of subjection to a higher will which rules the course of events but which we do not fully comprehend, are the fundamental principles of every better religion.”[277-2] By the side of two such remarkable men, I might place the opinion of a third not less eminent than they--Blaise Pascal. In one part of his writings he sets forth the “marks of a true religion.” Sifted from its physical ingredients, the faith he defines is one which rests on love and submission to God, and a clear recognition of the nature of man.