ORIGINS 31 



most earnest and honest and thoughtful. The 

 skeptics produced by this unreality are likely to 

 be those who are the real leaders of men: while 

 those who slip through are likely to be the un- 

 critical followers of others' thought 



That which does not appeal to us as real does 

 not seem to us important. Hence doctrinal dis- 

 cussion fails to awaken popular interest. It is 

 in vain that any effort is made to electrify doc- 

 trines into life which seem remote from the prac- 

 tical results of life. On the other hand, those dis- 

 cussions of great principles which appear to be 

 close to actual destiny are listened to with great 

 interest. If the preacher of to-day will go into 

 the field of realities, discover the principles which 

 are there working, and come forth and announce 

 them to the people, he will have a hearing in any 

 pulpit, unless perchance the pulpit itself refuses 

 to give him admission to it. 



Into some of the theology of our religious 

 books fictitious elements have been introduced on 

 one side to build a theory, and then another fiction 

 is introduced to cancel it, so that the result may 

 be somewhere near what the universal sense of 

 mankind demands. For an example, in Pope's 

 work on "Christian Theology" (III, 317) we find 

 him saying: "Children of wrath as belonging to 

 the lineage of the first Adam, they are grafted 

 into the second. . . . Unholy by nature, they 

 are sanctified through baptismal consecration to 

 God." This is evidently dealing with imaginary 



