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REV. S. B. MCCORMICK, D.D._, ON 



socializing of the faith of to-day. So far as content is con- 

 cerned it will include the loftiest, the most permanent and the 

 most com23rehensive human values. It will provide ultimate 

 sanctions for business integrity, personal purity, patriotism and 

 social righteousness in general. It will not degenerate into the 

 religion of humanity, and it will be more than a religion the 

 content of which is identical with democracy. We have reason 

 to believe that it will still retain for the most part its denomi- 

 national and institutional forms as the necessary setting for the 

 spiritual ideal. Creeds will exist, but their content will be 

 limited to those ideas which have been found of proven worth 

 as a result of experience and the test of social efficiency. 

 Eituals also will survive. They will not be subordinated, 

 however, to dogmatic prejudices. Through them will be 

 provided a beautiful and effective setting for religious 

 truth. 



Central in the religion of the future will be the idea of God. 

 The God as men will come to know Him will not be identical 

 with the external deistic conceptions of the past, nor with the 

 tri-theistic monotheism of the present. The Deity of the 

 democracy of the future will embody the highest spiritual 

 aspirations and provide the ultimate religious and moral 

 sanctions for a progressive and intelligent community. The life 

 of that democracy will be His life. He will share in its 

 triumphs and defeats, in its suffering and sinning. " Society as 

 a federal union, in which each individual and every form of 

 human association shall find free and full scope for a more 

 abundant life, will be the large figure from which is projected 

 the conception of the God in Whom we live and move and 

 have our being." 



Finally, the religious faith of America, each race contributing 

 something to it, will be the enthronement of the Gospel of 

 Scripture as the supreme law of life, Eeligion will more and 

 more become the life of men, not something outside of them. It 

 will be as Micah expresses it, " To do justly and to love mercy 

 and to walk humbly with thy God." It will be as James expresses 

 it, "To visit the fatherless and widows in their afdiction and to 

 keep oneself unspotted from the world." It will more and 

 more tend to put emphasis upon what is vital and essential ; 

 less and less upon what is formal and ceremonial. The 

 wonderful words of Jesus, setting forth fundamental and 

 universal truth, will become the very heart of the religious 

 faith of the people. Their application to the need of universal 

 mankind will receive more general recognition, and conduct and 



