ion, we may note the
familiar observation that the entire complexion of orthodox teaching of
religion has been more altered in the past fifty years than in two
thousand years before. This of course is not entirely due to the
influence of physical and biological science; no effect has a unique
cause, in the complex sociological scheme. Archaeology, comparative
philology and textual criticism have also contributed their share; and
the comparative study of religions has further tended to broaden the
outlook and to make for universality, as opposed to insularity, of view.
It is coming to be more and more widely recognized that all theologies
are but the reflex of the more or less faulty knowledge of the times in
which they originate, that the true and abiding purpose of religion
should be the practical betterment of humanity--the advancement of
civilization in the best sense of the word; and that this end may
perhaps be best subserved by different systems of theology, adapted to
the varied genius of different times and divers races. Wherefore there
is not the same enthusiastic desire to-day that found expression a
generation ago, to impose upon the cultured millions of the East a
religion that seems to them alien to their manner of thought, unsuited
to their needs and less distinctly ethical in teaching than their own
religions.

Such are but a few of the illustrations that might be cited from many
fields to suggest that the mind of our generation is becoming receptive
to a changed point of view that augurs the coming of a new ethnic era.
If one may be permitted to enter very tentatively the field of prophecy,
it seems not unlikely that the great revolutionary invention which will
close the third period of civilization and usher in a new era is already
being evolved. It seems not over-hazardous to predict that the air-ship,
in one form or another, is destined to be the mechanism that will give
the new impetus to human civilization; that the next era will have as
one of its practical ideals the conquest of the air; and that this
conquest will become a factor in the final emergence of humanity from
the insularity of nationalism to the broad view of cosmopolitanism,
towards which, as we have seen, the tendencies of the present era are
verging. That the gap to be covered is a vastly wide one no one need be
reminded who recalls that the civilized nations of Europe, together with
America and Japan, are at present accustomed to sp