all
things in the firm belief that the truth will prevail. Moreover,
criticism has a positive psychological effect in that it calls
attention to the actual situation and directs attention to the living
problems. It is that spur to the soul which prevents it from going to
sleep. Without it, problems are avoided rather than sought. Who can
deny that this lethargy has been the disheartening temper of the
Christian Church, now when every domain of life cries aloud for
vigorous thought? Surely religion has to do with more than the common
decencies of life, important as they are. Its place is in the van of
the fighting; it has to do with last hopes and glimpsed visions, with
what is to come as well as with what is. Religion at its tensest has
to do with ultimate loyalties. Habit and tradition are helpless in
such matters, which are of things hoped for--upon this earth.

But enough of the critical side. We have said that the coming religion
will say yea to human life. Yet it will not affirm it in a blind and
sentimental way. It will be realistic and striving. All great
religions of the past have recognized the tragic aspects of human life,
its brevity, its littlenesses, its fussy selfishness, its lack of
vision, its suffering; but they have too often been led to despise
humanity by seeing it on the illimitable background of celestial
omnipotences and perfections. {215} Religion as loyalty to human
values will lose no whit of this tragic sense, and yet the palsying
background of supernaturalism will disappear. Some measure of tragedy
will remain; but its morbidity will have been separated out and
courageously rejected. Social groups will fall to with a will to live
largely and widely. They will seek a tingling welfare woven of the
threefold values of truth, beauty and goodness. The saint will not be
the groveling sinner, but the man of mellow wisdom. He will be
immersed in the currents of life and yet master of himself. He will be
at once the servant of concrete and compassable ideals and their
possessor and enjoyer.

The shadow of the Great War will lighten to the coming generation soon
after peace is declared. Then will come the time for the taking of
stock and the revaluation of human endeavor. Man must ask himself more
seriously than ever before what things are worth while, and thereupon
bend his political and economic instrumentalities to their furtherance.
And here the religion of human values must