ive than melodramatic revivals
which stir people's emotions and leave them without chart and compass
before the problems of their every-day life? The church must {209}
learn prevention; it must go to school to the social and mental
sciences. Only so will it conquer that dilettantism which accompanies
the absence of methodical intelligence.

But the churches have the right to respond that they are not the only
sinners in this regard. Institutions of all kinds display the same
tendency to retardation, to conservatism, to waste of energy, the
beliefs and habits of the past clinging heavily about them as
impedimenta. It is seldom that a new life wells up quickly enough
within them to break this inertia. Perhaps all that the younger
generation has the right to ask is a spirit of tolerance and even
respect for all loyalties which attach themselves to things of good
repute, and a more catholic admission of all human values into the
class of spiritual things. The scientist is working for things of the
spirit, and so is the artist, and so is the social reformer, and so is
the educator, and so is the day-laborer who does his work for the sake
of some dear one.

The sea of faith of which Matthew Arnold sang is indeed at its ebb; but
a new sea of faith is welling up in the human soul, faith in humanity,
in this life here and now, a faith in common things and common people,
a faith in noble things and their gifted creators, a faith founded in
sympathy and in mental integrity and rooted in the actualities of life.
It is a faith grounded on the high will to assimilate and carry further
the spiritual values which the human race has slowly achieved in its
travail of the centuries. Not to relinquish but to surpass, not to
deny but to transform: thus will the new day be won. Let the spiritual
forces which have grown up around religion, industry, science,
philosophy, {210} citizenship and art fall to with a will, to bring
some fuller measure of the long-dreamed-of Kingdom upon this earth,
which has been and forever will be man's sole home.

{211}

CHAPTER XVI

THE HUMANIST'S RELIGION

In the preceding pages we have no doubt often hurt--but we have hurt to
heal. The good surgeon probes deeply in order that he may not have the
operation to perform again. Even a minute amount of diseased tissues
left behind can prevent the return of vigorous and creative health.
Thus what may seem to the anxious patient unnecessary cru