try letting them stand in peace as
complement and supplement the one to the other. Still better, they may
perhaps some day see how each penetrates, permeates and glorifies the
other.

THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

We said that the last generation had been characterised by an unexampled
concentration of intellectual interest upon problems presented by the
social sciences. With this has gone an unrivalled earnestness in the
interpretation of religion as a social force. The great religious
enthusiasm has been that of the application of Christianity to the
social aspects of life. This effort has furnished most of the watchwords
of religious teaching. It has laid vigorous, not to say violent, hands
on religious institutions. It has given a new perspective to effort and
a new impulse to devotion. The revival of religion in our age has taken
this direction, with an exclusiveness which has had both good and evil
consequences. Yet, before all, it should be made clear that it
constitutes a religious revival. Some are deploring the prostrate
condition of spiritual interests. If one judged only by conventional
standards, they have much evidence upon their side. Some are seeking to
galvanise religious life by recurrence to evangelistic methods
successfully operative half a century ago. The outstanding fact is that
the age shows immense religious vitality, so soon as one concedes that
it must be allowed to show its vitality in its own way. It is the age of
the social question. One must be ignorant indeed of the activity of the
churches and of the productivity of religious thinkers, if he does not
own that in Christian circles also no questions are so rife as these.
Whether the panaceas have been all wise or profitable may be questioned.
Whether the interest has not been even excessive and one-sided, whether
the accusation has not been occasionally unjust and the self-accusation
morbid, these are questions which it might be possible in some quarters
to ask. This is, however, only another form of proof of what we say. The
religious interest in social questions has not been aroused primarily by
intellectual and scientific impulses, nor fostered mainly by doctrinaire
discussion. On the contrary, the initiative has been from the practical
side. It has been a question of life and service. If anything, one often
misses the scientific note in the flood of semi-religious literature
relating to this theme, the realisation that, to do well, it is o