ents is such as Immanuel Kant
described and realised in his calm and beautiful life--a religion based
on the sublime realities of the moral law.

And now, perhaps, we may say something of the thoughts of our
philosopher, though at present it cannot be more than of a fragmentary
character. If the ethical movement is to prove enduring, the name and
teaching of Immanuel Kant must be frequently before us, and numberless
opportunities afforded for an ampler account of his doctrine. For the
moment my purpose was rather to put before my readers some idea of the
man himself whose teaching is now exercising so deep an influence on the
religious tendencies of the hour.

Every time you read of the vicar of a parish changing pulpits with his
Nonconformist brother; every philanthropic meeting you hear of as
addressed by clergymen of all denominations; every garden party given by
a bishop or a dean to a Dissenters' Conference; every advance you
gratefully note towards a wise and patient tolerance of theological
dissensions, the sinking of sectional differences in the interests of a
higher and purer life--ascribe it all to the beneficent influence of
Immanuel Kant. Before his day all these fraternisings would have been
impossible; the ancestors of these reconciled brethren were ready to
scourge and burn each other, until Kant came and shamed them out of their
narrowness and bigotry. Men talk no more of "mere morality," as though
it paled into positive insignificance by the side of the dogmatical
majesty of articles and creeds. Kant has taught them "a more excellent
way," and in so far as they have learnt that one lesson, they and we are
members of the one great Church--the Church of the ethically redeemed,
the Church of men to come--the idealism, the enthusiasm, of the ages to
be. Never let it be forgotten. We are not concerned to controvert or to
destroy. The message of Kant to the Churches is that in all essentials
we are at one with them, and the trend of thought is now setting visibly
towards the substitution of an ethical for a doctrinal basis of religion.
You are powerless to resist the times, we would urge. Whether the old
names and formulae survive or not, "the irresistible maturing of the
general mind" will make it impossible for men to acquiesce in any
religious belief not grounded on the conviction that the sole test of a
man's status is not what he believes, but what he does. This is Kant,
this is Christ, and th