). It may,
of course, also be quite properly approached from the point of view of
the history of religion; and from whatever standpoint it is treated,
the question is one of importance for the missionary, both because of
its intrinsic interest for the philosophy of religion, and because its
discussion is apt to proceed on a mistaken view of facts in the history
of religion. About those facts and their meaning, the missionary, who
is to be properly equipped for his work, should be in no doubt: a right
view and a proper estimate of the facts are essential both for {212}
his practical work and for the theoretical justification of his
position.

One answer to the question before us is that morality is the basal
fact--the bottom fact: if we regard the question historically, we shall
find that morality came first and religion afterwards; and, even if
that were not so, we should find that as a matter of logic and
philosophy religion presupposes morality--religion may, for a time, be
the lever that moves the world, but it would be powerless if it had not
a fulcrum, and that fulcrum is morality. So long and so far as
religion operates beneficially on the world, it does so simply because
it supports and reenforces morality. But the time is not far distant,
and may even now be come, when morality no longer requires any support
from religion--and then religion becomes useless, nay! an encumbrance
which must either fall off or be lopped off. If, therefore, morality
can stand by itself, and all along has not merely stood by itself, but
has really upheld religion, in what is morality rooted? The answer is
that morality has its roots, not in the command that thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul, but in human
solidarity, in humanity regarded as a spiritual whole. To {213} this
conclusion, it is said, the history of recent philosophy has steadily
been moving. If the movement had taken place in only one school of
philosophic thought, it might have been a movement running into a
side-track. But it is the direction taken by schools so different in
their presuppositions and their methods as that of Hegel and that of
Comte; and it is the undesigned coincidence of their tendency, which at
first could never have been surmised, that carries with it a conviction
of its correctness. Human solidarity, humanity regarded as a spiritual
whole, may be called, as Hegel calls it, self-conscious spirit; or you
ma