2. _In Fellowship within the Kingdom._--And not only in coming into the kingdom, but also within the religious fellowship of the kingdom, we are emphatically members one of another. In bringing us into that love which is God's own life, God evidently has no intention of allowing us to cut ourselves off from our brethren, to climb up to heaven by some little individual ladder of our own. That humility or open-mindedness, which constitutes the first beatitude and the initial step into the kingdom, and that self-sacrificing love, which constitutes the last beatitude and the crown of the Christian life, are both possible and cultivable only in personal relations to others. No man ever got them alone. And, for this very reason, in the discussion of the religious life, we found the New Testament guarding most carefully against all over-estimation of marvelous experiences as such. For these tended to make a man feel that he had such an individual ladder of his own to heaven, and had no need, consequently, of his brethren; and so led him into the very reverse of the fundamental Christian qualities--into unteachableness instead of humility and open-mindedness, and into censoriousness instead of love. That objective attitude which is essential in all character and work and happiness, cannot be unimportant in our specifically religious life. Even in this most individual relation to God, then, men's outlook is varied and but partial. We need to share, and can share, one another's visions. The meaning of the many-sidedness of even a great human personality gets home to us only so--through the various impressions gained by different men. Much more can God be revealed to us, even approximately, only so. The great and surpassing value of the New Testament lies exactly herein, that it gives the varied impressions upon the first Christian generation of God's supreme revelation--the most important individual reflections of Christ. The New Testament comes to stand, thus, in no merely external and mechanically authoritative relation to the life and faith of the church, but in the most interior and vital relation. And Bible study gets a new significance for us, as we see it, as at one and the same time our chief way to our own vision of God's actual, concrete self-revelation, and our deliverance from our merely subjective dreaming. We come to share in some living way the vision of these others who have seen most directly and most largely. 3. _In Intercessory Prayer._--One particular application to our religious life, of this conviction of the social consciousness of our mutual influence, seems worthy of mention--its bearing upon intercessory prayer. Few other things in religion, one may suspect, seem less real to modern men. Can we ground the matter a little more deeply for ourselves, and give it reality, by showing its close connection with this deep-rooted conviction of the social consciousness?