May we not be in a subjective prison from whose walls words and prayers
rebound without outer effect?

How far may we trust our experience as validating the inferences we draw
from it? The Christian thought of God is after all no more than an
hypothesis propounded to account for the Christian life. May not our
experiences be accounted for in some other way? We must distinguish
between the adequacy of our thought of God and the fact that there is a
God more or less like our thought of Him. Our experience can never
guarantee the entire correctness of our concept of Deity; a child
experiences parental love without knowing accurately who its parents
are--their characters, position, abilities, etc. But the child's
experience of loving care convinces the child that he possesses living
parents. Is it likely that, were God a mere fancy, a fancy which we
should promptly discard if we knew it as such, our experience could be
what it is? An explanation of an experience, which would destroy that
experience, is scarcely to be received as an explanation. Religion is
incomparably valuable, and to account for it as self-hypnosis would end
it for us as a piece of folly. Can life's highest values be so dealt
with? Moreover, we cannot settle down comfortably in unbelief; just when
we feel most sure that there is no God, something unsettles us, and
gives us an uncanny feeling that after all He is, and is seeking us. We
find ourselves responding, and once more we are strengthened,
encouraged, uplifted. Can a mere imagination compass such results?

How shall we test the validity of the inference we draw from our
experience?

One test is the satisfaction that it gives to _all_ elements in our
complex personality. One part of us may be deceived, but that which