I once heard a sermon by a distinguished preacher upon "Rest."
It was full of beautiful thoughts; but when I came to ask myself,
"How does he say I can get Rest?" there was no answer. The sermon
was sincerely meant to be practical, yet it contained no experience
that seemed to me to be tangible, nor any advice that I could
grasp--any advice, that is to say, which could help me to find the
thing itself as I went about the world.

Yet this omission of what is, after all, the only important problem,
was not the fault of the preacher. The whole popular religion is
in the twilight here. And when pressed for really working specifics
for the experiences with which it deals, it falters, and seems to
lose itself in mist.

The want of connection between the great words of religion and
every-day life has bewildered and discouraged all of us. Christianity
possesses the noblest words in the language; its literature overflows
with terms expressive of the greatest and happiest moods which can
fill the soul of man. Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith, Love, Light--these
words occur with such persistency in hymns and prayers that an
observer might think they formed the staple of Christian experience.
But on coming to close quarters with the actual life of most of us,
how surely would he be disenchanted. I do not think we ourselves
are aware of how much our religious life is

Made up of phrases;

how much of what we call Christian Experience is only a dialect
of the Churches, a mere religious phraseology with almost nothing