Page:What Religion Is (1920).djvu/77

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62
RELIGION

of oneself, which may be exultant, but can hardly fail at times to put the finite being on the rack.

We have approached too near to argument. But let the reader consider for himself how a supreme love and trust — Dante’s love — must be felt by a finite creature. It cannot be all simple receiving. It must make a severe demand. And if we might choose our own conditions, should we not rule out most things worth doing?

In a word, religion is just the weld of finite and infinite. Such an experience may be triumphant, but can it be costless?

“The whole creation . . .”; and yet we do not see how it can all share in religion. Yet it has been written:

The spirit of the worm beneath the sod
In love and worship blends itself with God.

Religion says nothing against this that I know of. At any rate the