PURE SCIENCE AND THE IDEA OF THE HOLY 



natural resources is wrested from a class and transferred to the com- 

 munity, "the relations between human beings in practical everyday- 

 life would assume the aspect of perfectly intelligible and reasonable 

 relations as bet^^een man and man, and as betrv^een man and nature." 

 "The moment this becomes possible," John Lewis goes on, "the 

 religious institution is confronted with an altogether new crisis. 

 Hitherto it has stood for an unrealisable ideal, and has alternated 

 bet^^een secularisation and transcendentalism. It now becomes possible 

 to enmesh the ideal in the material world without loss.^ So long as 

 the social and economic organisation was of such a character that it 

 could not permit the realisation of his ideals, the idealist was steadily 

 forced to accommodate his principles to its inexorable demands in so 

 far as he decided to live and work in society and not to dream. On 

 the other hand, if he determined to keep his ideals intact, then he 

 could not effectively grapple with reality, and was compelled to 

 become a hypocrite (making the best of both worlds) or a mystic. 

 But when social development reaches the stage when ideals are 

 realisable, the struggle becomes capable of a successful issue. It is not 

 settled, but it is no longer condemned to futility by the very nature 

 of the conditions. As a consequence, the whole structure of religion 

 changes. The ecclesiastical, devotional, and mystical forms proper to 

 a dualistic period, become obsolete. Religion has been adapted to the 

 needs of a class society; it must now suffer complete transformation 

 as the classless world approaches. To some this spells the death of 

 religion, and 'blank materialism;' to others it is what they had always 

 sought. The prophet should be able to welcome the new age. Now 

 at last it will be possible to manifest the will of God in social relations, 

 and show forth the glory of His purpose in the common ways of life. 

 In the words of Zechariah^ and Ezekiel:^ 



'In that day there shall be written upon the bells of the 

 horses. Holy unto the Lord. . . . Yea, every pot in Jerusalem 

 shall be holy unto the Lord of Hosts.' 



^ The belief that it is possible to enmesh the ideal within the real ^orld, to transform 

 the real world, is profoundly Christian, but also profoundly Hebrew and profoundly 

 Confucian. In ancient Chinese writings the sages are frequently said to unite Heaven 

 and Earth by their virtue (teh, ;^). Apart from magic imdertones, tliis surely means 

 that by their insight into the nature of human community, they understood how to 

 enmesh the highest moral good in the real world. As the Ta-shioh says, one must find 

 the highest moral good and then stop (chih, ([-) there, not going on beyond it or 

 evading it by sophistical arguments. 



^ xiv. 20, 21. 8 xliii. 12. 



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