hole experience of the war seems to convey is that religion has
failed to be either a great creative force or a great restraining
power, although to express this as a failure of religion may imply
more than we have a right to expect of it. Religion did not cause the
war, but it certainly did not prevent it. It had no power to make
peace. Yet we see that now religion is needed more than ever, and that
if the social life be not deeply infused with the religious spirit,
and if we do not live as a world more in the religious spirit,
something fundamental and necessary will be wanting which may be the
most essential factor of progress and civilization. The war leaves us
with the feeling, perhaps, that until now the world has had far too
many religions and too little religion. There has been too much of
creed and too little of deep and sustaining religious moods. Perhaps,
as Russell says, we are to be convinced that religion has been too
professional; there has been too much paid service, and too little
voluntary service.

Such conclusions of course have in them all the reservation that
personal reactions must have, but it is easy to believe that in the
life of such a nation as our own, and indeed in the world, no
practical unity will ever be permanently reached unless there be a
firm basis in a common religious foundation. This we might say is made
probable by the truth that religion is the most fundamental thing in
life, and if there be no unity and common understanding in that
sphere, there can be none in reality anywhere in life. Differences in
creed mean little, except in so far as they conceal basic agreement
and make artificial barriers; differences in the way of understanding
and valuing the world mean everything. We want a common religious
faith--common in the possession at least of the moods which make a
harmonious social life possible, and of the spirit in which the
world's work can, we may believe, alone be done.

Upon such grounds one might maintain that a very important part of the
work of education everywhere is to teach now more _natural religion_,
or rather perhaps _that the school must be everywhere conducted to a
greater extent in the spirit of religion_. Then we might hope to see
religion becoming actually a power in the social life, helping to
transform the crude forces and purposes of the day into higher ones.
With such a religious basis we might begin to see the working of God
in history and in the wo