many a mother, wife, daughter, or sister, your hearts full of desolation; bending, like the widow, in speechless sorrow over the spiritual corpse of son or husband, father or brother — dead to God by their neglect of the sacred duties of religion. And you come here, as to the Christ, seeking to again move Him to pity; begging Him to repeat to you the consoling words: " Daughter, weep not," or to your unfortunate relative: "Young man, I say to thee, arise." May Christ comfort your afflicted hearts as He did that of the widow of Nairn!
Brethren, by religion I mean the sum of the relationship between man and God — God creating preserving, sanctifying, and saving man; and man's consequent duties of knowing, loving, and serving God in this life, with the hope of eternal happiness in the next. No one, except possibly the fool, will dare say in his heart, there is no God. On the other hand, the soul's consciousness of her own intellectual nature and inherent longing for everlasting happiness, loudly proclaim her to be spiritual and immortal. Now between those two beings, God and man, the connecting link — the bond of union — is religion. Whether we will or no, whether we recognize it or not, such a bond surely exists. For, though man at his creation becomes a distinct individual, still, not even God Himself could make a single creature independent of his Creator. But alas! what God refuses to do — what God is unable to do — man, foolish and ungrateful, is not slow to attempt. For the man without religion — the man
