464 HISTORY OF RELIGION 



ions import. When millions of men ardently desire and earnestly 

 strive for a better adjustment of social relations, a more equitable 

 distribution of wealth, the abolition of war, the enfranchisement of 

 woman, the prevention and cure of disease, universal education, 

 religious toleration and good will among men, religion has nothing 

 to fear. As the Reformation followed in the wake of humanism, with 

 its emancipation of the mind and sympathy for classical antiquity, 

 so the social idealism of the present day, with its larger ethical ideals 

 and universal human sympathies, seems to prognosticate a fresh 

 outflowering of the religious consciousness into harmony with the 

 moral demands of that infinite power which determines man's 

 destiny. 



