and affirms it, a denial that they are real. This is the very crux and test of religion, and its combined simplicity and profundity are here most plain. Nothing is so simple, nothing is so impossible. It is the cry from the heart of religion for all time, “Only believe.”
It is here that you must leave the distinctive ground of morality, while carrying with you its demands, and the social atmosphere which make it a halfway house to religion. For in the social whole the good is partly real, and partly, therefore, we are saved from the condemning “ought to be.” But, in principle, mere morality says, “You ought to be equal to the situation.” The good is imperative on you here and now, and you are to make it real in and by your will. Fail in doing this, in showing yourself perfectible in and by yourself, and to all conceivable ages you are a moral failure, even if you claim a
