intelligence with low desires." Was Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon unintelligent? Caesar and Napoleon—were they unintelligent? Has the most monumental and destructive selfishness in human history been associated with poor minds? No, with great minds, which, if the world was to be saved their devastation, needed to be reborn into a new spirit. The transforming gospel which religion brings is indispensable to a building of the kingdom of righteousness upon the earth.

Wherever one listens, then, to the typical teaching of modern Christians, he finds himself in the atmosphere of the idea of progress. Men's thoughts of God, of Christ, of the Church, of hope, their methods of apologetic, are shaped to that mold—are often thinned out and flattened down and made cheap and unconvincing by being shaped to that mold—so that an endeavour to achieve an intelligent understanding of Christianity's relationship with the idea of progress is in part a defensive measure to save the Gospel from being unintelligently mauled and mishandled by it. Marcus Dods, when he was an old man, said: "I do not envy those who have to fight the battle of Christianity in the twentieth century." Then, after a moment, he added, "Yes, perhaps I do, but it will be a stiff fight." It is a stiff fight, and for this reason if for no other, that before we can get on much further in a progressive world we must achieve with wisdom and courage some fundamental reconstructions in our Christian thinking.

[1] Aratus of Soli: Phaenomena, lines 122-3.

[2] Lucius Annaeus Seneca: Naturalium Quaestionum, Liber VII, 25.

[3] T. Lucretius Carus: De Rerum Natura, Lib. V, 1455—"Paullatim docuit pedetentim progredienteis."

[4] Marcus Aurelius Antoninus: Meditations, IX, 28; VI, 37; XI, 1.

[5] Andrew D. White: A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, Vol. I, p. 97.

[6] Roger Bacon: Epistola de Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturae, et de Nullitate Magiae, Caput IV, in Opera Quaedam Hactenus Inedita, edited by J. S. Brewer, p. 533.

[7] Jerome Cardan: De Subtilitate, Liber Decimusseptimus: De artibus, artificiosisque rebus.

[8] Edward Winslow: Hypocrisie Unmasked, p. 97.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Blaise Pascal: Opuscules, Preface to the Treatise on Vacuum, in The Thoughts, Letters and Opuscules of Blaise Pascal, Translated by O. W. Wight, p. 550.

[11] Alfred Tennyson: Locksley Hall Sixty Years After.

[12] Comte de Saporta: Le Monde des Plantes avant L'Apparition de L'Homme, p. 109.

[13] H. Faye: Sur L'Origine du Monde, Chapitre XI, p. 256-7.

[14] Joseph McCabe: The End of the World, p. 112.

[15] Eduard von Hartmann: Ausgewählte Werke, viii, pp. 572-3 (Leipzig, 1904).

[16] Joseph McCabe: The End of the World, pp. 116-117.

[17] Herbert Spencer: Illustrations of Universal Progress, Chapter I, Progress: Its Law and Cause, p. 58; Social Statics, Part I, Chapter II, The Evanescence of Evil, Sec. 4, p. 78 ff.

[18] Louis Bertrand: Saint Augustin, p. 342.

LECTURE II

THE NEED FOR RELIGION

I

One of the first effects of the idea of progress, whose development our last lecture traced, has been to increase immeasurably man's self reliance and to make him confident of humanity's power to take care of itself. At the heart of the idea of progress is man's new scientific control over life, and this new mastery, whereby the world seems ready to serve the purposes of those who will learn the laws, is the dominant influence in both the intellectual and practical activities of our age. That religion, in consequence, should seem to many of minor import, if not quite negligible, and that men, trusting themselves, their knowledge of law, their use of law-abiding forces, their power to produce change and to improve conditions, should find less need of trusting any one except themselves, was inevitable, but for all that it is fallacious. Already we have seen that a stumbling and uneven progress, precarious and easily frustrated, taking place upon a transient planet, goes but a little way to meet those elemental human needs with which religious faith has dealt. In our present lecture we propose a more specific consideration of this abiding necessity of religion in a progressive world.

How difficult it is to go back in imagination to the days before men grasped the meaning of natural law! We take gravitation for granted but, when Newton first proclaimed its law, the artillery of orthodox pulpits was leveled against him in angry consternation. Said one preacher, Newton "took from God that direct action on his works so constantly ascribed to him in Scripture and transferred it to material mechanism" and he "substituted gravitation for Providence." [1] That preacher saw truly that the discovery of natural law was going to make a profound difference to religion. For ages men had been accustomed to look for the revelation of supernatural power in realms where they did not know the laws. And as men were tempted to look for the presence of God in realms where they did not know the laws, so in those realms they trusted God to do for them what they did not know how to do for themselves.

Then men began discovering natural laws, and every time they laid their hands on a new natural law they laid their hands on a new law-abiding force and began doing for themselves things of which their fathers had never dreamed. Stories of old-time miracles are overpassed in our modern days. Did Aladdin once rub a magic lamp and build a palace? To-day, knowledge of engineering laws enables us to achieve results that would put Aladdin quite to shame. He never dreamed a Woolworth Tower. Did the Israelites once cross the Red Sea dry-shod? One thing, however, they never would have hoped to do: to cross under and over the Hudson River day after day in multitudes, dry-shod. Did an axe-head float once when Elisha threw a stick into the water? But something no Elisha ever dreamed of seeing we see continually: iron ships navigating the ocean as though it were their natural element. Did Joshua once prolong the day for battle by the staying of the sun? Yet Joshua could never have conceived an habitual lighting of the city's homes and streets until by night they are more brilliant than by day. Did Jericho's walls once fall at the united shout of a besieging people? Those childlike besiegers, however, never dreamed of guns that could blast Jerichos to pieces from seventy miles away. Huxley was right when he said that our highly developed sciences have given us a command over the course of non-human nature greater than that once attributed to the magicians.

The consequence has been revolutionary. Old cries of dependence upon God grow unreal upon the lips of multitudes. Sometimes without knowing it, often without wanting it, men are drawn by the drift of modern thought away from all confidence in God and all consciousness of religious need. Consider two pictures. The first is an epidemic in New England in the seventeenth century. Everybody is thinking about God; the churches are full and days are passed in fasting and agonizing prayer. Only one way of getting rid of such an epidemic is known: men must gain new favour in the sight of God. The second picture is an epidemic in New England in the twentieth century. The churches are not full—they are closed by official order and popular consent to prevent the spread of germs. Comparatively few people are appealing to God; almost everybody is appealing to the health commissioner. Not many people are relying upon religion; everybody is relying upon science. As one faces the pregnant