THE MODERN SKEPTIC 113 



signed a treaty with a Mohammedan country, in 

 which it was declared that " the government of the 

 United States is not in any sense founded on the 

 Christian religion." 



Hence, whatever we owe to Christianity, we can- 

 not begin to owe to it what the ancient peoples 

 owed to their religions. Great Britain still main- 

 tains the union of church and state, but it is a forced 

 and artificial union ; it is a union and not a oneness, 

 a matter of law and not of life, as in ancient times. 

 Yet ours is an age of faith, too, — faith in science, in 

 the essential soundness and goodness of the world. 

 We are skeptical about the gods, but we are no 

 longer skeptical about things, or about duty, or vir- 

 tue, or manliness, or the need of well-ordered lives. 

 The putting out of the candles on the altar has not 

 put out the sun and stars too. We affirm more than 

 we deny. We no longer deny the old religions, but 

 accept them and see where they belong. Man is 

 fast reaching the point where he does not need these 

 kinds of props and stays, the love of future good or 

 the fear of future evil. There was a time when the 

 pulling down of the temple pulled the sky down 

 with it, all motives for right were extinguished ; but 

 that time is past. Eighteousness has a scientific 

 basis ; the anger of heaven descends upon the un- 

 godly in the shape of penalties for violated laws. 

 A comet in the heavens is no longer a fearful por- 

 tent, but sewer gas in your house is. Cholera is 

 not a visitation for ungodliness, but for uncleanli- 

 ness, which is a form of ungodliness. We cannot 



