"Thou art able to enforce obedience from all frail mortals, Because we are all thine offspring."--CLEANTHES. From the fundamental truth that God is the Creator and Conservator of the universe, and that his providence presides over and directs the historic development of humanity, Christian doctrine advances, in a natural and logical order, to the recognition of the more direct and personal relations between God and each individual human soul. "He is not far from _any one_ of us, for in Him we live and move and are." God is intimately near to the human soul. God is the immanent ground of men's spiritual being. God is the Father of the human spirit. Therefore God is manifested _in_ man--in the constitution of his moral nature, and in the susceptibilities, the aspirations, the longings, the hopes and fears of his spiritual being; and God manifests Himself _to_ man by an inward illumination--"the true _light_ which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." Contemplate these relations on the Divine side, and you have the foundation of all moral government; study them on the human side, and you have the foundation of all religion, for religion is a mode of thought, of feeling, and of action determined by the consciousness of our relations to God. All Christian teaching proceeds upon the assumption that there exist in all men the elements of a _religious consciousness_. The recognition of some relation to an unseen moral Personality is a universal fact of human nature. The feeling of dependence, the sense of obligation, the sentiment of reverence, the tendency to worship, the apprehension of a future reward or punishment--these are the common characteristics of man. The untutored savage, the half-civilized pagan, the ancient philosopher, the modern scientist, all alike betray the consciousness of some mysterious bond which holds them fast to the unseen Power which controls the destinies of men. With this sentiment of the Divine there is associated in all human minds an instinctive yearning after the Invisible, a conscious susceptibility of our spiritual nature to the influences of the higher world, and a reaching out of the human spirit toward the Infinite, which prompt man to seek for a fuller knowledge and a deeper communion. Christianity assures us that this religious consciousness may, by a loving reception of the truth and a loyal allegiance to duty, be raised into a living _koinonia_--a living fellowship with and a conscious participation of the Divine life. Man may know God, not simply by verbal instruction, not merely through the symbolism of nature, or the providential unfoldings of human history, or even the moral attributes of his own spiritual being, but by an exalted and immediate consciousness. "The pure in heart shall _see_ God" by an inward vision of wondrous power and glory, in which they shall know God, and be as fully assured of his personal love and guidance as of the love and guidance of any human friend.