The Chief End of Man

erse is administered by righteousness and benevolence, are aside from the main road. The real task for man is to order his own life, as an individual and in society. To do that, he needs to understand his own life as a practical matter; he needs to study the procedure of the world in which he stands; he needs to rally every force of knowledge, resolution, sympathy, reverence, aspiration, upon this high business of personal and social living. As he achieves such life, there develop in him the faculties which read sublime meanings in the universe of which he is a part. As he becomes divine, he finds divinity everywhere. The heart of religion is joy, peace, energy, support under suffering, inward harmony, true relation with fellow creatures, grateful sense of the past, full fruition of the present, glad outreach to a beckoning future. The way to thatlife is wholly independent of doubtful argumentation. It lies simply in a whole-hearted conformity to what are known beyond all question as the worthy aims, the just requirements, the righteous laws. Let us consider somewhat at large the unfolding of this philosophy of life. Let us seek to sympathetically interpret the deepest, most significant working of the human spirit in our time. Is it not the distinctive note of the thoughtful and honest mind of to-day, as compared with a like mind some centuries ago, that it contemplates more directly the actual procedure of the universe, is less concerned with supernat... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.