Rev. S. M. Crothers preached in Appleton Chapel last evening from the text: "No man hath beheld God at any time; if we love one another, God abideth in us, and His love is perfected in us."

In introduction he said, to the main thought of the text, we may ask, what relation has faith in God to religion? We are tempted to say in reply, is not faith in God the very essence of religion? If we turn to one of the pagan religions we find that this is not true, for their faith in God exists without true religion. A man may believe in God as he believes in gravitation and yet know no religion. A man often believes in God because he can conceive of no other First Cause. The difference between faith in God and religion is that one is cold and the other a passion, an expression of the heart's longing to give all that it has to give.

We worship God through the ideals of our own souls. Why then talk of worshipping God, rather than that power of goodness and truth which is in humanity? Certainly the latter would be better than worshiping a cold force outside of ourselves. Is there no alternative? Can we not worship the infinite through the best that is in the Human, and thus rise form the human to the divin? But in the way of the pilgrim who journeys toward the city of God stands the giant Anthropomorphism. The saying "These cannot be God, because the workman made them," is as true of man's spiritual conceptions as it is of his idols.

This anthropomorphic tendency comes from the fact that we are in a world of forms and definitions. All forms are fugitive but substance remains. There is a substance under the forms which men give to their ideas of God. The substance underneath the idolator's conception is that which moves him to the act of devotion.

As we think of ourselves, we cannot but be conscious that we are a part of the working of the great power of the universe, and that we have some kinship with it. This is surely not anthropomorphism. When the poet says that could he but know the secret of "the flower in the crannied wall" he could know what God is, he does not make God something greater of the same kind; he means that the flower has the secret of the divine power which is manifest in its life. So we can say of the soul that if we know it we know God. And thus from the love that we see in man, we can say that God is love.

The choir Sang, "Lift Up Your Heads," Hopkins; "If Ye Love Me," Monk; "Benedictus," and "Agnus Dei," Woodward.