448 RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE: SOCIAL 



religion. Christianity, indeed, took up into itself large elements 

 from other religions. It deified that which was passing and forgot 

 that which was permanent. Disdaining other religions, it yet became 

 like them in their least worthy qualities. And claiming to be uni- 

 versal, it yet abandoned that simple, ethical, and spiritual quality 

 wherein alone its universality could consist. 



As we look back over the history of humanity in these nineteen 

 centuries of the Christian era, as we review the progress of the 

 race under other religions before and apart from our own, we 

 have thankfully to acknowledge that much has been accomplished. 

 The sense of brotherhood in the human race asserts itself ever 

 more and more strikingly. The dignity of man as man is acknow- 

 ledged. Slavery is all but done away with. Wars are conducted 

 with an underlying sense of the race unity and of the sacredness of 

 the humanity. And though some things are worse than war, yet all 

 men have a sense that war is a thing which is going to be done away. 

 Commerce and business are seeking still further to embody the prin- 

 ciple of fraternity. And all men have a sense that competition 

 within this realm is a thing which is going to be modified without 

 the sacrificing of any of those sterling benefits to character which com- 

 petition has conferred. Struggles and conquests which once were 

 looked down upon as purely secular are now admitted to have been 

 glorious triumphs, moral and spiritual. Some of the struggles which 

 have been made in the name of religion are now clearly seen to have 

 had their origin in the lowest human propensities and to have been 

 conducted in the basest human passion. And often what have been 

 deemed conquests of religion have been catastrophes to the race, 

 while the defeat of a contention made in the name of religion is seen 

 to have been a liberation and a blessing to mankind. 



The struggle for civil liberty has at times taken up into itself a 

 large part of the moral and spiritual vitality of a given age. And 

 in so far as it has been the expression of the idealism and of the 

 altruism of that age, it has been the religion of the age. We under- 

 stand the phrase of some in the time of the French Revolution 

 that the Revolution was their religion. But how often has the con- 

 ventional and the official religion of an age stood with the opponents 

 of civil liberty, and seemed to be interested in the perpetuation of 

 political tyranny. 



Take, again, the struggle for social equality, on behalf of economic 

 justice, for the righting of wrongs and the doing away of unjust 

 advantages. The effort for the creation of the outward conditions 

 of a nobler social life, who can deny that this effort has taken 

 up into itself no small part of the idealism and of the altruism of 

 our own age. And in so far they are a direct expression of the deep 

 religious spirit of the age. And yet many of those most ardently 



