For just in such application lies, as we shall come to see, the peculiarly intimate relation between what is deepest in philosophy, and what is truest and most abiding in religion. Some people have expected the philosopher to construct for them, a priori, a precise scheme of all things in heaven and in earth. But just so other people have looked to their religious faith to tell them, in advance, their private fortune, to assure them that their days would be long, their flocks prosperous, and their health abounding. And just as too enthusiastic students have thus anticipated from philosophy a certain magical insight regarding the detailed structure of nature and of man, so an unenlightened generation has asked its religious teachers for signs and wonders, and has held that the true faith must manifest itself through special Providences. But the one hope is as little founded in the deeper spirit of reasonableness as is the other; and the demand for a direct sign from heaven is not the abiding expression, either of the religious or of the philosophical consciousness.
Applied philosophy is like practical religion. It illumines life, but it gives no power to use the arts of the medicine man. What religion practically gives to the faithful is not the means for predicting what is about to happen to themselves, but the strength to endure hardness as good soldiers. Religious faith involves no direct access to the special counsels of God; but it inspires the believer with assurance that all things work together for good, and endows him with readiness to serve in his station the God who is All in all. Such religion is not, then, the power to work
