THE CALL TO SERVICE
the Church, and not getting it. If there is hostility in the world to religion per se, at least that is not what I am talking about; I speak solely of those optimistic veterans in the pews who still expect the service of religion from the new arrival just out of the divinity school.
They have a pretty clear notion as to what religion promises, and they grow impatient for the promise to be kept. Religion promises, in the old words, a more abundant life, an immediate as well as a distant benefit, an enjoyment to be entered upon in this present world. It would provide at once an exercise to develop the spiritual faculties we now have into powers we but faintly imagine. "More abundant life," to the religious-minded, is the phrasing of an old battle-hope, a more than ancient faith in his own sufficiency to approach God, which individual man, in this sense forever
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