often wonder whether I have made it quite clear to you why it is
possible to hold in high esteem personally the workers of Hull House and
these other philanthropists, while detesting their views as formulated
into a dogma. Just after I had sent off my last letter to you I met with
something in a morning paper which will throw light on my position. In an
address before Princeton Theological Seminary Dr. Lyman Abbott is reported
to have used these words:

"To follow Christ is, first of all, to give yourself to the service
of God by serving your fellow-men. This is more important than the
question of the Trinity, of the atonement, or of creeds."

Now the question of the Trinity or of the atonement may not seem essential
to me. My faith has passed out of them--beyond them, I trust; and at least
I do not call myself a Christian. But remember that Dr. Abbott is a
teacher of Christianity and was on this occasion addressing students of
theology. Certainly to him and to his audience these are, they must be,
the first of all matters in the realm of ideas, whether accepted or
rejected, and to speak slightingly of them is to show contempt for
everything that transcends the material world. I know that Dr. Abbott,
like some others, makes this service of our fellow-men to be a form of the
service of God; but the slightest knowledge of the spirit of the day,
indeed any intelligent reading of the words I have quoted, makes plain how
entirely this "service of God" is a tag, a meaningless concession to an
older form of speech. What seriously concerns our humanitarians is the
service of mankind. Now am I not justified in saying that true religion
would at least change the order of ideas and declare that to serve mankind
is, first of all, to give one's self to the service of God? This is not a
quibbling of words, but a radical distinction. It is because I find in all
so-called humanitarians this tendency to place humanity before God,
material needs before ideals, that I call them, when all is said, the most
insidious foes of true religion. Their very virtues make them more
dangerous than outspoken materialists and scoffers. It is largely due to
them and their creed that we have no art and no literature; for art and
literature depend, at the last analysis, on a reaching out after ideas, on
an attempt to transmute material things into spiritual values,--on faith,
in a word. The humanitarians cry out against the materialism and the
comm