n eternity. There is no reason, in the name of God or man, why
we should be content to let this world remain a place of torment and
foolishness, if we have reached a point when we can see the better way.
There is a certain type of religious mind which dreads the idea of
social reconstruction, on the assumption that we shall not long for
heaven if conditions here below are made less hellish.

There is also a type of churchman whose finer sensibilities are sorely
tried by the secular occupations of nonconformity in general. If once or
twice in their lives they should stray amongst Congregationalists,
Baptists, or Methodists, they come away disgusted at the brutal
directness with which social evils are exposed in the light of the word
of the Lord. They complain of the general lack of finesse and Latin; the
licence of the pulpit has usurped the reverence of the altar. It is
perfectly true that statements are sometimes made in nonconformist
pulpits which are bald and offensive to the ear of scholarly
accomplishment. But the complaint of secularization is singularly inept.
Nothing could be more secular in the way of complacent acceptance of the
worldly reasons for leaving awkward questions alone than the attitude
of this type of critic.

The future life of Christianity is safely vested in the _free_ Churches.
The freedom will be progressive, and may possibly embrace a vista of
unfettered interpretation and application of Christian knowledge which
will be as remote from the dogmatism of to-day as is our present
attitude from the intolerance which kindled the Inquisition and made
possible the night of St. Bartholomew. Religious intolerance has already
lost three-fourths of its hold on faith. Catholic will now slaughter
Catholic without the stimulus to hostility afforded by heretical
opinions. Protestants are not restrained from injuring each other by the
common bond of detestation of the adherents to papacy. The decline of
intolerance is a direct consequence of the externalization of the
religious life. Rationalists constantly mistake this process for the
degeneration of religion. They fail to see the simple fact that men can
afford to dispense with the paraphernalia of elaborate and artificial
aids to the worship of God when they feel His presence within their own
souls and unmistakably hear His call to action.

Some will see in the decay of intolerance an indication of the general
evaporation of Christian articles of faith,