of the day. The sects and theories multiply. The literature of the subject is something enormous. No person can keep up with it. When, however, religion once becomes a "fad," it is menaced with extinction.

What we have to contend with is not "belief" or unbelief," but the lack of deep interest in the more ideal aspects of life. The most aggressive bigotry may be preferable to the suave complacency with which many persons can worship physical comfort and play at being religious. A person can develop out of the former attitude by the very depth of his sincerity. But only a terrific shock from the outside can make the other type of man treat the subject seriously. People like to dally with religion as they do with art. They call it being "broad" and "seeing all sides," when in reality they do not see any side of the subject at all.

The one thing we seem to care the least about is to make our religion a part of our life. What we appear most to care for is rather the pleasure of talking and speculating about it. As we look out into the world, often it does not seem to make much difference in the character of a man what he believes. If we examine his external life, would it give us any clue to his religion? If we knew his religion, would it give us any clue to his outward life? Men are tending to wear their religion at the present day as a kind of garment which they can put on or off at their pleasure. There may be some to whom this situation appears as a matter for satisfaction and rejoicing, but to me it is a matter for gloom and despondency.

There is a danger threatening our civilization. We are trifling with tremendously serious things. There is something almost tragic in the peculiar speculative interest the public now takes in reform movements, social ideals, and religious aspirations. People are so eager to know something about them, and are ashamed if they cannot talk of them with others. They are anxious to keep up with every new theory. A kind of "intellectual sentimentalism" is characteristic of the day. A cry of suffering and agony goes up from human hearts, a passionate yearning for some higher form of personal life, or social ideal, or religious faith; and we discuss it on the street, and talk about it as though it were some new and strange invention, or some daring or diverting flash of poetic or philosophic genius. Poor struggling human nature lifts its cry in the darkness after new light and new life; and we analyze it, and study it, and philosophize about it, do everything, in fact, but share the feeling ourselves. But until we do come to have that feeling in our own hearts and not let it be a mere speculative theory, we shall never have any religious life, and we shall certainly never develop a new religion.

We should put aside this intellectual sentimentalism, and have a religion of the whole being. What a man believes ought to influence his life; else he has no religion. It should shape the whole trend of his existence. It should mark the very lineaments of his face and the still deeper lineaments of his soul. I see no use in a mere speculative faith that cannot become a part of a man's life. It is worse than useless. The enthusiasm for unity and brotherhood, which characterizes our day, will mean nothing unless

G

it calls forth a unity and brotherhood to some definite purpose; otherwise it will sink into an old-time religious emotionalism. I see no purpose in religious organization unless it can alter and refine the very foundations of human society. The Sunday attitude of worship, joined with the week-day attitude of “do as you please," must inevitably undermine the spiritual side of life.

It may be that the civilized world at the present time is going through the birth-throes of a new religion; but if it comes, it will be because the human heart everywhere is yearning for it. We shall never get it just by talking about it. It will not come mainly from those who write the books and preach the sermons, but rather from those who suffer and struggle. If there is ever a true "reunion of Christendom," it will occur not by each sect surrendering a part of its individuality, but by one Sect or Church showing itself superior to all others, so that it will survive as the "fittest," while the others die away or are merged into the one which has been triumphant.

What is required is a new Idealism, which shall lift men above their care about getting on in the world, or getting ahead of one another, or turning one man's loss to another man's gain. We cry, "religion is one!" and then build our social institutions on a principle which inevitably tends to rend humanity into shreds. What does that unity of religion amount to, if it is not going to bring about the unity of mankind?

The movement which ultimately is destined to survive will not be the one which simply offers a

new scheme of philosophy, but rather the one which is capable of giving more peace to the human heart, more depth to the human soul, more strength to the human will, more justice to the foundations of human society.

Our need is not for consolation, but for new sources of strength. thing to lean upon. ethical movement. losophy, but rather to teach and inspire men to be religious in that higher sense in which religious effort means the yearning of the soul of man to realize in personal life and in social institutions the divine element already existing as an ideal in the human heart.

The human will wants some

Hence the real purpose of an Its aim is not to find a new phi

It has been a great evil in past history that people have tended so often to give themselves over to the luxury of religious emotions, and let the welfare of humanity take care of itself. What wonder that men sometimes should have felt glad of the possible extinction of all religion! It is an appalling mistake. Religion is not an emotion, but a kind of life. Human selfishness may at times have made it otherwise; but a higher power in the heart of man himself has been struggling and battling against that selfishness. We can already see the indications of a new epoch. By and by theory will again harmonize with practice. If that other aspiration wins supremacy, if men come to care for these other ideals, the true religion will come of itself; it will appear as the natural bloom on the tree, whose seed was in the heart of man. Then, as the prophet said, "Justice shall run down as the waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

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HOW PEOPLE OF MANY MINDS CAN USE THE WORD "GOD"

It is a word that I very rarely use-not, however, because it means so little to me, but because it means so much.

To what extent can we conscientiously avail ourselves of a name which stands for such a great variety of contrary, if not contradictory, ideas among those who employ it? We have already said that it was not absolutely essential to ethical purpose or to the ethical life; that, in fact, a man could have an adequate motive for aspiring to lead a perfect and complete life, even if quite destitute of the beliefs. ordinarily connected with that Name. Then, too, we are aware that no two thoughtful persons will quite mean the same thing by the word; while those who think a great deal and those who think little, or none at all, will connect it with radically opposite standpoints. If we use it, we shall certainly be misinterpreted by many. They will have one image or one set of ideas in their minds; we shall have another. We may often stultify ourselves by using the term, and mislead those to whom we are speaking, because they will be viewing it in some other sense.

The philosopher's God will be a very different