The religious life

Front matter

SAVAGE

The pole-star may be clouded for a time, but it is never lost

BOSTON :

Preface

This volume contains a series of sermons preached in the regular course of my last winter's work. All but one of them was spoken, not written ; and they are now published from the stenographer's notes.

They do not, then, pretend to be a complete treatise on their subject. They have the limits of their method and their immediate aim. But, having reason to believe they were helpful to many, as preached, I send them out to preach again, in another form and to another audience.

The statement of a few strongly held behefs will show the stand-point of this book : —

1. I believe that religion is a permanent element in human life.

2. I believe it to be the most important of human interests.

3. It is being neglected or opposed, because those who claim to be its special exponents and guardians identify its essence with its clothing, and so refuse to recognize the changed conditions of the modern world.

4. I hold, then, that the grandest service a religious teacher can render his age is this : to show how religion persists through all changes of thought and life ; and, instead of dwindling and dying out, how it ever expands, to match the grander universe revealed by modern investigation.

5. This is true faith. To fear that by recognizing his real universe God is in danger of being lost, this is infidelity.

So believing, I wish to do what I can, not to save religion, — truth is never in danger, — but to help bewildered men and women to find it.

M. J. S.

Boston, September, 1885.

Contents

I. What is Religion ? 9

II. Comfort and Hope 24

III. Religious and Ethical Sanctions 39