Religion is an affair of the whole personality.  Some have emphasized the part feeling plays in it.  Pascal describes faith as “God felt by the heart,” and Schleiermacher finds the essence of religion in the sense of utter dependence.  Many of us recognize ourselves as most consciously religious in

      that serene and blessed mood
  In which the affections gently lead us on.

Our highest inspirations commonly come to us in a wistful yearning to be like the Most High, in a sense of reconciliation with Him, in a glowing enthusiasm for His cause, in the calm assurance of His guidance and protection, in the enlargement of our natures as they become aware of His indwelling.  “We feel that we are greater than we know.”

Others give prominence to the role of the intellect.  God is the most reasonable explanation of the facts of life.  Religious truths and men’s minds harmonize as though they had been made for each other.  The thought of Deity gives them perfect mental satisfaction.  Dante tells us:  “The life of my heart, that of my inward self, was wont to be a sweet thought which went many times to the feet of God, that is to say in thought I contemplated the kingdom of the Blessed.”  And a present-day English thinker, Mr. F.H.  Bradley, writes:  “All of us, I presume, more or less are led beyond the region of ordinary facts.  Some in one way and some in another, we seem to touch and have communion with what is beyond the visible world.  In various manners we find something higher which both supports and humbles, both chastens and transports us.  And, with various persons, the intellectual effort to understand the universe is a principal way of their experiencing the Deity.”

Still others lay the chief stress upon the will.  Man wills to live; but in a universe like ours where he is pitted against overwhelming forces, he is driven to seek allies, and in his quest for them he wills to believe in a God as good as the best in himself and better.  Faith is an adventure; Clement of Alexandria called it “an enterprise of noble daring to take our way to God.”  We trust that the Supreme Power in the world is akin to the highest within us, to the highest we discover anywhere, and will be our confederate in enabling us to achieve that highest.  Kant found religion through response to the imperative voice of conscience, in “the recognition of our duties as divine commands.”  Pasteur, in the address which he delivered on taking his seat in the Academie Francaise, declared:  “Blessed is he who carries within himself a God, an ideal, and who obeys it; ideal of art, ideal of science, ideal of the gospel virtues, therein lie the springs of great thoughts and great actions; they all reflect light from the Infinite.”