TEACHING OF RELIGION AND MORALITY 289 



and devout admiration, the springs of reverence, have been clouded 

 by half-knowledge and ignorance. The fearful wonder of the super- 

 stitious savage, and the devout humility of the true scholar are 

 both akin to religion. The savage worships because he fears the 

 power which is external to him; the scholar worships because he 

 sees and feels that the power that made the heavens is his own 

 essence. But there are many halts and arrests between these 

 extremes. 



The conquest of nature by science, moreover, tends to destroy our 

 reverent sense of dependence, and to breed self-sufficiency. 



The separation from nature, which to-day exists to a degree un- 

 precedented, is a fruitful cause of irreverence. The philosopher who 

 found in the starry heavens the counterpart of the moral law, and 

 the poet who escaped from the lecture room of the learned astrono- 

 mer to gaze " in perfect silence at the stars," enjoyed a privilege 

 missed by many in these days. 



We are submerged by the common prose of life at second-hand. 

 When one gets vegetables from the grocer, and not from the garden, 

 one is disposed rather to complain of man than to thank God. A 

 man who from one year's end to another never experiences palpable 

 proof of God's bounty, poured into his lap by the hand of nature, 

 will have difficulty in rounding out his religious life. Where one is 

 condemned to live for the most part in the man-made towns, instead 

 of in the God-made country, religion suffers along with the other 

 spiritual powers. Men used to be aided in their worship by animals, 

 fire, trees, and forests. There are worshipful elements in all these 

 things still. Yet we are largely missing them. 



Again, we in America are paying the penalty of having so radically 

 cut loose from the past. The distinct education, value of custom, 

 tradition, and form in family, in school, and in church, cannot safely 

 be disregarded. 



These causes suggest their own remedies. The spirit of reverence 

 will be promoted by increase in depth of knowledge, by loving con- 

 tact and communion with nature, by quickening the sense of social 

 authority, by safeguarding that which is of worth in the heritage of 

 custom. 



But there is a further characteristic of our time, and for that mat- 

 ter of every time, the lack of reverence of man for man. If men 

 were reverently conscious of themselves and their fellows as persons, 

 and treated them accordingly, the kingdom of heaven would have 

 arrived. The specific for this condition is religion, which has been 

 defined as " a deep and reverent consciousness of the transcendent 

 relations of personality; " l and in particular the religion of Jesus 

 Christ. Now, one fruitful cause, in my judgment, of the lack of 



1 Giddings, loc. cit. p. 396. 



