and prayer and earnest attempt to approach the God to whom we belong. It
is simply as if the stream turned back again to its fountain, that it
might refresh itself and make itself strong for the great work that it
had to do in watering the fields and turning the wheels of industry. It
is simply as if men plodding along over the flat routine of their life
chose once in a while to go up into the mountain top, whence they might
once in a while look abroad over their life, and understand more fully
the way in which they ought to work. These are the principles, these are
the pictures which represent that which we have in mind as we come
together for a little while each Monday in these few weeks, in order
that we may think about things of God and try to realize the depth of
our own human life. The first thing that we ought to understand about it
is that when we turn aside from life it is only that we go deeper into
life. This hour does not stand apart from the rest of the hours of the
week, in that we are dealing with things in which the rest of the week
has no concern. He who understands life deeply and fully, understands
life truly; he has forever renewed his life; and if there comes into our
hearts, in the life which we are living, a perpetual sense that life
needs renewal, a richening and refreshing, then it is in order that we
may go down into the depths and see what lies at the root of
things--things that we are perpetually doing and thinking. It is this
that brought us together here: it is that we may open to ourselves some
newer, higher life. It is that we may understand the life that we may
live, along side of and as a richer development of that life which we
are living from day to day, which we have been living during the years
of our life. How that idea has haunted men in every period of their
existence, how it is haunting you, that there is some higher life which
it is possible to live! There has never been a religion that has not
started there, lifted up its eyes and seen, afar off, what it was
possible for man to do from day to day, in contrast with the things