"RELIGION," writes a recent reviewer, "to most of my acquaintances remains the synonym of the house of bondage. Once they outgrow the subordinations of youth, they spontaneously, joyfully, cast religion aside." If there is any truth in this comment, it represents a tragic misconception of the real nature of religion. For it is the very purpose of religion to offer men not restriction but release. It is the open door for the mind of man seeking a meaning for the world and life that will lift him above the hard order of physical nature. It is a release for the spirit of man seeking the vision and the power of a new and larger life. The message of religion has always meant "good news" for those who bore it.

Let us not too quickly conclude that those who wish to throw it aside are simply seeking to rid themselves of the demand which religion makes, the narrow door by which man's spirit must always enter into the larger life. However that may be, we do well to ask ourselves whether it may not also be true that the men of our day do not understand religion for what it really is. Religion, which is freedom and life, tends constantly to lose itself in those forms which of necessity it must create when it seeks to express itself, its creeds and codes and ritual and organization. It is far easier for the mass of men to hold the form than to know the life, and the result is that the life may be lost in the forms which should serve to express it.

There is then a double task which rests upon every generation, and especially upon those of us who believe that in the weakness and distraction of this period the liberation and guidance of religion are the supreme need. First, we must further the life; religion itself must come to a new birth as the experience of the eternal here in time, of its power to liberate and its right to command. Second, we must reinterpret this life for the thought and needs of our day.

It is to this second task that the following chapters are dedicated. They aim to set forth the significance of religion by pointing out the meaning of God. Religion lives from the conviction that there is a world of spiritual reality in which the meaning of human life is to be found, and that world for us is summed up in the idea of God. What now does God mean for the life of the man of to-day? If religion is to abide in power, it is this which must first be made dear. If man feels no need of God, if God remains simply a topic in theology, an article in the creed, or a philosophic system, then the great mass of people will pass him by. It is God as the heart of a living faith that needs to be shown to men. The writer then does not aim primarily to furnish a philosophy of religion; excellent philosophical expositions of the idea of God have been furnished in recent years by such men as Hocking, Pringle-Pattison, Sorley, Henry Jones, and Beckwith, Neither is the aim here to defend or expound traditional theology.

The writer takes his stand frankly within the Christian faith, convinced that the meaning of the world and of life has come to men in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He seeks to make plain what such a faith means for the thought as well as the life of the man of to-day.

But while the aim is to set forth the meaning of the Christian conception, the attitude is not dogmatic nor the method merely to set forth traditional theological formulae. No appeal to external authority will settle these matters for the man of to-day. At every step the attempt must be made to consider the world about us in the light of our best knowledge as it bears on this our faith, and then to ask what this faith means as we bring it to bear upon this our world.

The substance of this volume was presented as a series of lectures on the Quillian Foundation at Emory University. The writer wishes to express to the Faculty of the University his appreciation of the honor of the invitation to deliver these addresses as well as of many other courtesies shown to him in this connection.

While the order of discussion here followed seems to the writer the logical one, the reader less familiar with such inquiries may find it more interesting and profitable to begin with the third chapter, taking the first two chapters last.

HARRIS FRANKLIN RALL.

GARRETT BIBLICAL INSTITUTE

EVANSTON, ILLINOIS