RELIGION AND SCIENCE 295 



substituting the hopefulness of natural causation for 



the illogical vagaries of supernaturalism and incom- 



municability. 



******* 



I may perhaps be allowed to close with a few more 

 practical aspects of the problem. 



Many religious ideas and practices, as man's 

 thought clarified itself, have proved to be unservice- 

 able, and have been thrown on the lumber-heap, or 

 left only with the losers in the race. It is impossible 

 for any educated man nowadays to believe in the 

 efficacy of magic, or of animal sacrifice; to accept the 

 first chapter of Genesis as literally true; or to be- 

 lieve that God has human parts and passions. But 

 there was a time when all these could be, and were, 

 believed. 



The time is obviously coming when a great many 

 other ideas must be cast aside in favour of new ones. 

 If you have followed me, you will agree that it is 

 impossible for me and those who think like me to 

 believe in God as a person, a ruler, to continue to 

 speak of God as a spiritual Being in the ordinary 

 way. Consequently, although the value of prayer 

 persists in so far as it is meditative and a self-puri- 

 fication of the mind, yet its commonly accepted peti- 

 tive value must fall to the grouild; ^ so must all idea 

 of miracle and of direct inspiration ; so must all that 

 is involved in the ordinary materialist ideas of ritual, 

 self-denial, and worship as merely propitiation or 



^ See Turner, '16. 



