IN THE FORM OF EDUCATION AND RELIGION 5 



character, such as the monogamic marriage, the protection of helpless 

 infancy in certain fundamental rights, the protection of women, 

 the care for the aged and the weaklings of society, private ownership 

 of property, including under property land and franchises as well as 

 movable chattels. The church includes in its fundamentals the 

 security of life against violence, and makes murder the most heinous 

 of crimes. It insists on respect for established law and for the 

 magistrates themselves. It even goes so far as to protect the heretic 

 and to insure the private right of the individual to dissent from the 

 established or prevalent religious creed so far as church worship or 

 dogmas of theology are concerned. It is obvious that the community 

 as a social whole would be obliged to limit its toleration of private 

 creeds were there a great extension of Nihilism possible or were there 

 to arise sects that attacked the sacredness of the family institution 

 by polygamy, for example, or by the abolition of marriage; or sects 

 that attacked civil society by attempting practically to abolish the 

 ownership of property (Proudhon said: " All property is robbery "); 

 or by the denial of the right of laborers to contract with employers 

 for their labor. 



When we study these fundamental ideas common to the different 

 confessions of our composite church, we see at once how powerful 

 is the established doctrine of the prevailing religious ideal in our 

 civilization in exerting an authoritative control over individuals 

 as to belief and practice. 



IV 



Many people have come to believe, in this age of greatly extended 

 religious toleration, that the church as an institution is moribund 

 and that its authority is about to disappear wholly from the earth 

 in an age of science, of the ballot-box, and 'of universal secular educa- 

 tion at public expense. It would seem to them that public opinion 

 is sufficient or about to become sufficient by means of the newspaper 

 and the book to secure life, personal liberty, and the peaceful pursuit 

 of happiness without the necessity for a religious provision for 

 social culture. Only the culture that comes from the secular school 

 is adjudged to be necessary for all. 



For the proper consideration of this question it is necessary to 

 take up more fundamentally the origin and real function of religion. 

 We shall find two fundamental views of nature and man the foun- 

 dation of two opposite religious movements in the world's history 

 the Christian and the Oriental. According to one of these views 

 our free secular life, our science and the arts, our literature and our 

 productive industry and our commerce, are utterly perverse and not 

 to be tolerated on any terms. 



