102 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



duties of this life, and the undue prominence given to a supposed 

 preparation for an alleged future life, of which he has no evidence 

 and can form no conception. 



But though the Church fails to furnish adequate ethical training 

 to those who can not accept its theological teachings, some kind of 

 moral education is necessary if we would have true moral develop- 

 ment. While much can be done in the home circle in teaching the 

 rudiments of the science of duty the beauty of love and charity 

 and other attributes of noble character this is not alone sufficient 

 to meet the demand which should exist for true ethical culture. 

 Teachers are needed. The complicated interests which surround most 

 of the great social and moral problems demand the most careful and 

 patient study, and only he who has brought to these tasks the forces 

 of a well-trained mind can suggest the true means of relief from con- 

 ditions which all may recognize as deplorable. The value of associa- 

 tion with a broad and generous mind a mind filled with high and 

 pure conceptions of duty a mind which ever presents and holds be- 

 fore us high and noble ideals, can not well be overestimated. 



The time may come when the Church will so far outgrow the 

 myths, the dogmas, and the beliefs with which it now straggles that 

 there will be room within it for all who would earnestly unite in 

 efforts to better the condition of man, and to diffuse a knowledge 

 of those principles which lie at the foundation of human happiness. 

 There is, indeed, a progress of thought in the Church far broader and 

 deeper than any actual modifications of written creeds would indicate. 

 We will not pause to inquire as to what class of thinkers is chiefly en- 

 titled to the credit for this progress. This rapid development in the 

 direction of individual freedom of thought may give us at length a 

 church by whatever name it may be designated where the only 

 creed held binding will be the creed of love, the only devotion essen- 

 tial to true fellowship a devotion to truth and duty. 



Meanwhile, though there are signs of progress, and noble excep- 

 tions in the few societies for ethical culture now existing, and in sim- 

 ilar organizations, it is evident that the demand for ethical progress 

 outside the Church has not as yet culminated in any general con- 

 structive effort either in the direction of improving the condition of 

 the weak, the needy, and the suffering, or in the cultivation of the sci- 

 ence of duty. 



It is in one sense an unfortunate circumstance that most rational- 

 ists are persons of very independent habits of thought. Their work 

 in the past has been necessarily and perhaps almost too largely one 

 of iconoclasm. The exposure of shams, the demolition of creed and 

 dogma, the unveiling of myth and traditional faith based upon founda- 

 tions which have slowly crumbled away in the light of increasing in- 

 telligence, have thus far largely occupied the attention of the ration- 

 alist. The men who have done this work are not of a nature which 



