e spirit of Hellas, the Greek delight in beauty and faith
in reason, with the moral strength and religious insight of Hebrew
prophecy.

Those who are concerned for the future of our civilization will look
eagerly for signs of any such development in the religious life and
thought of our time. Do recent history and present experience discover
any influences at work which may yet restore a unifying power to
religion? Naturally any answer to such a question will be of a
subjective character. The personal equation cannot easily be eliminated;
we may be duped by our hopes or deceived by our fears. In the last
analysis we cannot safely predict the future of religion. We may,
however, take stock of our present situation, and survey its significant
elements, even if our value-judgements as to their relative importance
will inevitably vary.

While religious divisions have not vanished from the West, and indeed
show no prospect of immediate reconciliation, and while the formation of
new sects, of which the Christian Science Movement offers an example,
has not altogether ceased, there has been an admitted decline of the
dogmatic and sectarian tempers, and this decline has opened the way for
knitting up severed friendships. The revolt against the dogmatic
attitude of mind and even against religious dogma itself is widespread.
The sense of loss involved in the isolation of any sect, and the wish to
pass beyond the limits of any denominational tradition, are both
appreciably affecting the religious situation. In England Matthew
Arnold's somewhat unhappy criticism of Dissent expressed a dislike both
of dogma and sectarian narrowness. His profounder contribution to the
better understanding of St. Paul derives its worth precisely from his
elevation of the mystic and the saint in Paul at the expense of the
doctrinal theologian of Calvinist tradition. The wish to be rid of dogma
continues to find vigorous intellectual expression, of which Mr. Lowes
Dickinson's _Religion, a Criticism and a Forecast_, may be taken as an
example. In another direction the Brotherhood Movement and the Adult
School Movement represent the search, if not for an altogether
undogmatic faith, yet at least for a broader basis of association than
is compatible with the insistence on definite statements of belief. Both
would unite in the prayer

God send us men whose aim will be
Not to defend some outworn creed,

and some members of both entertain the susp