d that in Swinburne's _Songs
before Sunrise_ may be found an 'anthology of prayer suitable for use
in the Church of Humanity,' prayers 'as sublime and quickening in
melody and passion as anything in the Hebrew prophets or the Litany of
the Church.'

Dr. Coit does not denounce theology as theology, he even insists on
being himself ranked among theologians. His readers may be surprised
to learn on what doctrines he dwells with particular fondness. He
laments that belief in the existence and power of the devil should be
waning. 'We may not believe in a personal devil, but we must believe
in a devil who acts very like a person.' {48} He predicts that teachers
will more and more teach a doctrine of hell-fire. Out of kindness they
will terrify by presenting the evil effects, indirect and remote, of
selfish thoughts and dispositions. 'We must frighten people away from
the edge of the abyss which begins this side of death.' Finally,
though, of course, the word is not used in the ordinary sense, the
necessity of the doctrine of the Incarnation is upheld. 'The
Incarnation must for ever remain a fundamental conception of religion.
Until all men are incarnations of the principle of constructive moral
beneficence, and to a higher degree, Jesus will remain pre-eminent; and
it is quite possible that in proportion as he is approached, gratitude
to him will increase rather than diminish.' 'Even should any one ever
in the future transcend him, still it will only be by him and in glad
acknowledgment of the debt to him. There never can in the future be a
dividing of the world into Christianity {49} and not Christianity. It
will only be a new and more Christian Christianity, compatible with
liberty and reason.'

Thus the drift and tendency of this book bring us back, however
unintentionally, to the Faith of which it appears, at first sight, to
be the renunciation. It establishes irresistibly that Morality, to be
living and permanent, must have religious sanction and inspiration,
that we need to be delivered from the awful thraldom of evil, that the
supreme realities are the things which are unseen; that prayer is the
life of the soul; that public worship is a necessity; that in Christ
the greatest redemptive power has been embodied, and the purest vision
of the Eternal has been granted; and that, in its adaptation to human
needs, its fostering of human aspirations, its ministering to human
sorrows, its renewal of human penitenc