172 MATTER, ENERGY, CONSCIOUSNESS, SPIRIT 



aires and slums, armaments and the desolation of 

 war. But let us turn to the other side of the picture. 

 The use, rather than the abuse, of this control of the 

 unlimited resources of Nature brings within the 

 range of practicability the abolition of poverty, 

 destitution and economic slavery of the many, in 

 contrast to the few. Weighty enough influences 

 still prevent any approach to the realisation of 

 Utopia, but and this should be written on every 

 Church throughout the length and breadth of the 

 land they are not now physical but moral. The 

 Churches, which should have been the first to 

 welcome the possibility of making such a forward 

 step, have still to be won over to the side of the 

 humane man. They have hitherto in this country 

 proved themselves the most bigoted and powerful 

 opponents of the science, which alone has been able 

 to bring within the realm of practical politics for the 

 masses the Christian principles to which they have 

 rendered such devoted service as academic aspira- 

 tions and ideals. 



One of Huxley's truest and most profound re- 

 marks is contained in the Rectorial Address he 

 delivered to the students of this university. " Men 

 are beginning, once more, to awake to the fact that 

 matters of belief and speculation are of absolutely 

 infinite practical importance." 



It is of the greatest practical sociological import- 

 ance to ask ourselves whether or not we believe in 

 God. If so, in what sort of a God absolute, 

 exercising complete dominion over the soul and 

 spirit of man, his mind, intellect and aspiration 

 towards the beautiful, his body, over animals, 

 vegetables, the inanimate universe of space and time, 

 matter, energy, the ether and electricity ? A religion 

 that on the most important questions of everyday 

 life has nothing to say, either definite or constructive, 



