THE SECULAR LIFE AS THE EXPRESSION OF THE 



RELIGIOUS SPIRIT 



BY EDWARD CALDWELL MOORE 



[Edward Caldwell Moore, Parkman Professor of Theology, Harvard University, 

 since 1902. b. West Chester, Pennsylvania, September 1, 1857. A.B. 

 Marietta College, Ohio, 1877; A.M. ibid. 1880; graduated Union Seminary, 

 New York City, 1884; Fellow for two years studying in Giessen, Gottingen, 

 and Berlin, Germany, also 1894 in Oxford; Ph.D. Brown University, 1891; 

 D.D. Marietta College, 1893. Pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church, 

 Yonkers, New York, 1886-88; Pastor of Central Congregational Church, Prov- 

 idence, Rhode Island, 1888-1902. Member of American Historical Society; 

 Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis. Author of The New Testament 

 in the Christian Church.] > 



WHEN one reflects upon the strifes of which religions have been 

 the occasion, when one recalls the divisive influence in human 

 society which the religiously minded have often exerted, it may 

 sound strange to say that the very gist of religion is its uniting and 

 reconciling quality. In religion, so only that it be deeply and truly 

 apprehended, all sides of life find their harmony and all kinds of 

 men the basis of mutual regard and of cooperation. Yet surely 

 that was a thought to which the greatest of the Hebrew prophets 

 had risen. It is an idea to which the most exalted spirits under 

 the ethnic religions attained. And however much Christians may, 

 at times, by their harsh bearing towards the rest of mankind, and 

 by their antagonism to much of life, have promoted narrowness 

 and contention, yet surely they did not gather that spirit from the 

 Nazarene. 



The intent of his gospel for all mankind was plain. The joy with 

 which he greeted truth and goodness in any man was obvious. He 

 expected all men everywhere who any way followed truth and good- 

 ness to feel his fellowship with themselves. His attitude toward 

 men of other races and of other faiths was the very thing which 

 alienated him from the magnates of his own. He had absolutely 

 no sympathy with ecclesiastics. He spoke scathingly of their con- 

 ventionalities and exclusiveness. Devout Jew that he was, and 

 never losing his sense for the meaning of the services of religion for 

 the spiritual life, he yet never worked for the propagation of the 

 synagogue dogma or for the triumph of the temple worship. And 

 still less did he work, as some Christians have dreamed, for a dogma 

 and ritual which were to bear his own name and to take the place of 

 these. His serene and natural attitude toward men's business and 

 their pleasures, toward things not deemed religious, shocked and 

 amazed the professedly religious among his contemporaries. They 



