244 RELIGION 



(1) In the first place, I think it must be said that the ultimate 

 aims of religion and education are essentially the same. For, on the 

 one hand, the best education seeks to call out the whole man in his 

 highest harmonious development. That education often falls short 

 of this highest aim must, of course, be granted; but to this ideal it 

 must nevertheless be held, and any education must be regarded as 

 defective in just the degree in which it fails to accomplish this aim. 



Religion, too, at its highest, as looking always to the fulfillment of 

 the supreme personal relation, involves everywhere the full person- 

 ality in its highest possible response; and, just so far as it attains 

 its aim, must touch and quicken every faculty, must call out the 

 entire man, volitionally, emotionally, intellectually. In the con- 

 crete case, doubtless, religion also fails all too often to reach its final 

 goal; but the power of the genuine religious experience to quicken 

 to its best the entire personality of the man cannot be doubted. The 

 ideal aims, therefore, both of education and religion, surely fall 

 together. 



(2) If one compares religion and education, in the second place, 

 as to means and spirit, a similar result is obtained. For, on the one 

 hand, true education must offer, as I have elsewhere said, " the 

 opportunity to use one's full powers in a wisely chosen complex en- 

 vironment, in association with the best; and all this in an atmos- 

 phere catholic in its interests, objective in spirit and method, and 

 finely reverent in its personal relations." That is, the great means 

 in the truest education are broad environment, work calling out 

 the whole man, and personal association. The spirit demanded is 

 catholic, objective, and loving. 



Now, if these means and this spirit are those properly demanded 

 in true education, just these means and just this spirit, it must be 

 said, in like manner hold throughout for religion also. That this is 

 for the most part true would probably hardly be questioned by 

 any; and it may be maintained that the parallel holds even as to 

 the catholic and the objective spirit, where perhaps most question 

 would arise. 



For, as to the first, we are coming to see with increasing clearness 

 that the true spirit of the life of religion, as of the life of culture, 

 must be that of a broad catholicity. As Wundt says, " The dangers 

 that come with civilization can be met only by the further advance 

 of civilization." Psychological investigation, in its insistence upon 

 the necessity of a wide range of interests for the large and free and 

 sane life, is forcing upon us everywhere the conviction that no ideal 

 interest has anything to gain by exclusiveness ; that it is not in the true 

 interest of the sacred to attempt to draw a sharp line between the 

 sacred and the secular; that, in point of fact, the denial of legitimate 

 worldly interests only limits the possible sphere of morality and 



