e the Holy Spirit real to
the world. For the supreme moral asset in any man's life is not his
aggressiveness nor his pugnacity, but his capacity to be inspired--to
be inspired by great books, great music, by love and friendship; to be
inspired by great faiths, great hopes, great ideals; to be inspired
supremely by the Spirit of God. For so we are lifted until the things
we tried to see and could not we now can see because of the altitude at
which we stand, and the things we tried to do and could not we now can
do because of the fellowship in which we live. To one asserting the
adequacy of the scientific control of life, therefore, the Christian's
third answer is clear: man's deepest need is spiritual power, and
spiritual power comes out of the soul's deep fellowships with the
living God.

Such, then, is the abiding need of religion in a scientific age. To be
scientifically minded is one of the supreme achievements of mankind.
To love truth, as science loves it, to seek truth tirelessly, as
science seeks it, to reveal the latent resources of the universe in
hope that men will use them for good and not for evil, as science does,
is one of the chief glories of our race. When, however, we have taken
everything that science gives, it is not enough for life. When we have
facts, we still need a spiritual interpretation of facts; when we have
all the scientific forces that we can get our hands upon, we still need
spiritual mastery over their use; and, beyond all the power that
science gives, we need that inward power which comes from spiritual
fellowships alone. Religion is indispensable. To build human life
upon another basis is to erect civilization upon sand, where the rain
descends and the floods come and the winds blow and beat upon the house
and it falls and great is the fall thereof.

[1] Andrew D. White: A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology
in Christendom, Vol. II, p. 16.

[2] Quoted in the Hibbert Journal, Vol. III, January 1905, p. 296.

[3] Psalm 19:1.

[4] Ernst Haeckel: The Wonders of Life, p. 413.

[5] Arthur Schopenhauer: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Zweiter
Band, Kapital 46, Von der Nichtigkeit und dem Leiden des Lebens, p. 669.

LECTURE III

THE GOSPEL AND SOCIAL PROGRESS

I

Our last lecture started with the proposition that the dominant
influence in the intellectual and practical activity of the modern age
is man's scientific mastery over life. This present