w experiments in practical Christianity should be imposed on
the world. Religion in the past has been conceived as essentially a
matter of suppressing the intellect, submitting to oppression and
injustice, learning to bear patiently the inflictions of Providence.
Religion in the future will demand all the attention which our feeble
intellect can offer it, and the conscious and willing co-operation of
mankind in the realization of God's plans for a regenerated world.

Whilst the Churches addicted to ritualism and literalism decline, the
Brotherhood movement gains in force and influence. Men meet to give
united expression to their religious impulses. They meet for prayer and
worship, but never without immediate bearing on some great social
question or object. Opinions are freely expressed. Heterodoxy in details
of faith is rampant, and is no obstacle to Christian fellowship. To the
Sunday afternoon and evening gatherings of the Brotherhood flock the
many to whom the Bible is still a source of spiritual food, and who
demand a plain and practical interpretation of its teachings. An
impromptu prayer, in which the keynote is the loving fatherhood of God,
and its bearing on the brotherhood of man, precedes a homely address or
sermon, closely packed with allusions to social and political questions.
Or the address is entirely secular; a downright unbeliever has been
invited to give the audience the benefit of his knowledge or experience,
in connection with some great movement for the betterment of the world.
There is a disinclination to criticize anybody's religious views,
provided he shows by his acts and life that he is part of the new
Ministry of Humanity. Here we have the pivot of the change which is
overtaking the forms of religious expression.

Men are no longer content to regard this world as a hopeless place of
squalor and sin, as intrinsically and incurably wicked, as an abode
which cannot be mended and which must, therefore, be despised and
forsaken in spirit, even before the time when it has to be forsaken in
body. The possible flawlessness of an other-worldly state no longer
compensates for the glaring faults of this. This is no sign of the
weakening of the spiritual hold on reality. It is a sign of the
spiritualization of the values of life. It is a sign that we begin to
understand that we _are_ spirits here, now, and everywhere, that we see
that time in this world and the way we employ it have a profound
bearing o