urches. That would be putting the cart before the
horse. What is wanted is a driving force which will enable the
churches to fulfil their true mission of saving the world, or, to put
it better still, will serve to bring mankind back to real living faith
in God and the spiritual meaning of life. Hardly anyone would
seriously deny that the world is waiting for this. Men are not
irreligious. On the contrary there is no subject of such general
interest as religion; it takes precedence of all other subjects just
because all other subjects are implied in it. Religion is man's
response to the call of the universe; it is the soul turning towards
its source and goal. How could it fail to be of absorbing interest?
What is wanted is a message charged with spiritual power, "Where there
is no vision the people perish." Mere dogmatic assertions will not do.
The word of God is to be known from the fact that it illuminates life
and appeals to the deepest and truest in the soul of man. That message
is here now. It is being preached, not by one man only, but the wide
world over. God has spoken, and woe betide the churches if they will
not hear. Religion is necessary to mankind, but churches are not.
From every quarter of Christendom a new spirit of hope and confidence
is rising, born of a conviction that all that is human is the evidence
of God, and that Jesus held the key to the riddle of existence.
Although this comes to us as with the freshness of a new revelation, it
is not really new. It is the spirit which has been the inspiration of
every great religious awakening since the world began. In this country
and in other parts of the English-speaking world that spirit is
becoming associated with the name the New Theology. To associate it
with any one personality is to belittle the subject and to obscure its
real significance. There are many brave and good men in the churches
and outside the churches to-day, men of true prophetic spirit, who
would reject utterly the name New Theology, but who are thoroughly
imbued with this new-old spirit and are leading mankind toward the
light. In the church of Rome the movement is typified by men like
Father Tyrrell, whose teaching has led to his expulsion from the Jesuit
order, but not, so far, from the priesthood. The present condition of
the church of Rome is not unhopeful to those who believe as I do that
that venerable church has been used of God to great ends in the past
and tha