energies of religion.  Whereas it is evident that in the religious communities which lift their eyes above their low hedges to the high hills of God—­to the great simple outlines of His kingdom, to the ideals and destiny which God has set before mankind—­in such churches faith in His nearness to the world and in His readiness to help must always abound.  To men who have an eye for the big things of earth, God will always seem to be afoot upon it.  They are conscious of an arena worthy for Him to descend upon, and of causes worthy for Him to interfere in.  It is no shock to their reason, no undue strain upon their imagination, to feel the Almighty and the All-loving come down to earth, when earth has such horizons and such issues.

Turning to ourselves as individuals, we may ask why we have such distant notions of God, so shy a faith of His coming within the circle of our own life and work?  Why are our prayers so formal, so empty of the expectation of an immediate and divine answer?  Why is our attitude at our work so destitute of practical enthusiasm?  Because we, too, are not lifting our eyes to the hills.  We are looking for nothing but little things, and therefore we see nowhere any threshold or field worthy of God.  How can the sense that the living God is near to our life, that He is interested in it and willing to help it, survive in us, if our life be full of petty things?  Absorption in trifles, attention only to the meaner aspects of life, is killing more faith than is killed by aggressive unbelief.  For if all a man sees of life be his own interests, if all he sees of home be its comforts, if all he sees of religion be the outlines of his own denomination, the complexion of his preacher’s doctrine, the agreeableness and taste of his fellow-worshippers—­to such a man God must always seem far away, for in those things there is no call upon either mind or heart to feel God near.  But if, instead of limiting ourselves to trifles, we resolutely and ’with pious obstinacy’ lift our eyes to the hills—­whether to those great mountain-tops of history which the dawn of the new heavens has already touched, periods of faith and action that signal to our more forward but lower ages the promise of His coming; or to the great essentials of human experience that at sunrise, noon and evening remain the same through all ages; or to the ideals of truth and justice; to the possibilities of human nature about us; to the stature of the highest characters within our sight; to the bulk and sweep of the people’s life; to the destinies of our own nation that still rise high above all party dust and strife—­then we shall see thresholds prepared for a divine arrival, conditions upon which we can realise God acting.  Our hope will spring, an eager sentinel, as if she already heard upon them all the footfalls of His coming.