one-sided loyalty which prided itself on its
asceticism. But the day of an irrational asceticism has passed.
Intensity {10} is good, but intensity and breadth are better still. A
humane religion will preach loyalty to many values, harmonized together
by the work of a concrete reason and a living art. When religion did
not consider itself of this world, it was passive and acquiescent
toward many features of human life. But a truer idea of the nature of
the spiritual, united with a decay of the old supernaturalistic
sanctions, will change all that. Religion will become active and
militant, intensely concerned with everything human, a loyal enthusiasm
for all the significant phases of life. It will cease to be a matter
of taboos, of ritual, of rather conventional routine and become a
spirit of vigorous search for whatever elevates and ennobles human
beings in their day of life. Into the service of such a religion
reason and art will gladly enter.

But this interpretation of religion has its obverse side. It is in
part directed against the age-old, supernaturalistic perspective which
has done so much to render religion a hindrance to the growth of
spirituality. The growth of my own thinking has led me to see, ever
more clearly, the harm done in this day and age by that emphasis on
sanctions for conduct which are not justified by the vital and concrete
needs of human life. The appeal to tradition and authority abstracted
religion from that fresh contact with the movement of events which
makes the great causes of history so vivid and appealing. This
abstraction divided the spiritual life of man against itself and led to
inefficiency and confusion. What the world needs to-day is a rational
enthusiasm for human values. The thought of another world with its
melodramatic last judgment encouraged individualism, withdrew {11}
attention from social problems and aspirations, made the conception of
the spiritual anaemic and vague. The official spirituality of the
Church lacked the happy stimulus of a social setting.

Bad as this division of man's spiritual life against itself was, it was
not all. Man had been taught to despise reason, almost his highest
quality. The consequence was, that reason passed into the service of
the mere technical arrangements of life. Man rationalized nature and
left himself irrational, as can be seen in the Great War. Because
religion ignored reason and slighted many sides of man's natur