THE NEW SECULARISM 



15 



No wonder is there that the meetings of Secularists 

 are cold and lack reverence ! It is because they have 

 discarded the only Person who has been able to stimulate 

 mankind to revere Him. That is the secret of true 

 Christianity ; which the Secularists have thrown aside as 

 a myth, and now find they have thrown away the one and 

 only motive capable of kindling the hearts of men into 

 warmth and reverence ; which, too, could bind them into 

 one Brotherhood instead of their remaining, after thirty 

 years, disconnected units only. 



Mr. Gould's paper is most significant, and if he could 

 only see that our evidences for the historical personality 

 of Jesus Christ are as sound and logical as he thinks they 

 are illogical^ he may yet find it necessary not only to 

 come to us for ritual and music, but for the " Motive " for 

 goodness as well. 



In Mr. Bussell's admirable account of Socrates, he 

 shows some curious parallels, with differences, to Modern 

 Secularism. 



Like the Sophists (he says) Socrates was " as hostile 

 to indolent acquiescence in convention ". So are the 

 Secularists to complacent believers in dogmatic theology. 

 " Yet, unlike the Sophists, a constructive, 2, positive process 

 of instruction succeeded to this preliminary purgative. 

 . . . He seems to postulate a power for the conscientious 

 student, the earnest thinker, of reaching, of having contact 

 with what was True and Good. This power he thought 

 was inherent in Soul as such." ^ 



" He strives, as the chief task of education, to make 

 his pupil interested in himself He appeals to the under- 

 lying sense, in each man, of duty, of a love for beauty and 

 goodness, which once fully realised (too sanguine op- 

 timist !) cannot but take effect in action." - 



1 The School of Plato, p. 84. 2 gp. dt., p. 88. 



