whose future is precious to us. We
would be glad to have them trained in ways of decency and
self-control, of dignity and grace. It would make us happy if there
were in the world institutions conducted by men and women of
consecrated life who would specialize in teaching a true morality to
the young. But it must be a morality of freedom, not of slavery; a
morality founded upon reason, not upon superstition. The men who teach
it must be men who know what truth is, and the passionate loyalty
which the search for truth inspires. They cannot be the pitiful
shufflers and compromisers we see in the churches today, the Jowetts
who say they used to believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy
Ghost. Rather than trust our children to such shameless cynics, we
will make shift to train them ourselves--we amateurs, not knowing much
about children, and absorbed in the desperate struggle against
organized wrong.

It is a statement which many revolutionists would resent, yet it is a
fact nevertheless, that we need a new religion, need it just as badly
as any of the rest of our pitifully groping race. That we need it is
proven by the rivalries and quarrels in our midst--the schisms which
waste the greater part of our activities, and which are often the
result of personal jealousies and petty vanities. To lift men above
such weakness, to make them really brothers in a great cause--that is
the work of "personal religion" in the true and vital sense of the
words.

We pioneers and propagandists may not live to see the birth of the new
Church of Humanity; but our children will see it, and the dream of it
is in our hearts; our poets have sung of it with fervor and
conviction. Read these lines from "The Desire of Nations," by Edwin
Markham, in which he tells of the new Redeemer who is at hand:

And when he comes into the world gone wrong,
He will rebuild her beauty with a song.
To every heart he will its own dream be:
One moon has many phantoms in the sea.
Out of the North the norns will cry to men:
"Baldur the Beautiful has come again!"
The flutes of Greece will whisper from the dead:
"Apollo has unveiled his sunbright head!"
The stones of Thebes and Memphis will find voice:
"Osiris comes: Oh tribes of Time, rejoice!"
And social architects who build the State,
Serving the Dream at citadel and gate,
Will hail Him coming through the labor-hum.
And glad quick cries will go from man to man:
"Lo, He has come,