y it still maintains a precarious kind of an
existence, but it no longer claims supreme power. It is content to urge
its utility as a source of inspiration, to rank as one among a number of
other forces that are frankly secular in nature. Finally there has been
no growth in the shape of an extension of knowledge of the object of
religious belief. Of the nature of deity we know no more than did our
earliest ancestors. In earlier generations the nature of God, his aims
and intentions, were discussed with the same degree of confidence that
one now sees displayed in discussing schemes of sanitation. The modern
believer is now more anxious to impress upon the world how little he
knows about God, or how little it is possible for him to know. This is
not surprising except in the fact that it is called religious growth.
And if this be a sign of growth one wonders what would be considered
indications of decay. Historically religious life presents us, not with
a process of growth, but one of shrinkage. To reduce the gods from many
to few, and from a few to one is not growth. To limit the functions of
deity from those of a direct, particular, and universal character, to an
indirect, general form is not growth. To refine the idea of a personal
deity until it becomes that of a mere abstract force, is not growth. All
these are so many modifications of the religious idea under pressure of
advancing knowledge--so many attempts to state religion in such a way
that it can conflict with nothing we know to be true because it answers
to nothing of which we are certain.

The idea of God, the idea of religion, does not begin in a mystery or in
some abstract conception, but in an assumed knowledge of certain
concrete facts of experience. Man believes in the gods because of what
he thinks he knows about them, not because of what he does not know. The
talk of a mystery is the jargon of a priesthood which finds it
profitable to keep the lay mind at a distance. Increased emphasis is
placed on mystery because religious teachers are alive to the danger of
basing their beliefs upon matters that can be brought to the test of
experience. Mystery mongering is not the beginning of religion, but a
sign of its approaching demise. Mysticism, too, is no more than a cover
for a sanctuary that has been emptied of all worthy of respect. But if
religion is to really live, it must have some knowledge, no matter how
little or how imperfect, of the subject with whic