y himself. It may seem a curious way
for inducing harmony to set out to prove everyone in the wrong; but the
point is clear, not to attack what men believe but to ask them to
justify their words by their deeds. The request is not unreasonable and
it may be asked in a tone that will show the sincerity of him who makes
it and waken a kindred feeling in all earnest men. The world will be a
better place to live in, and we shall be all better friends when every
man makes a genuine resolve to give us all the example of a better life.

III

A development that would require a treatise in itself I will but touch
on, to suggest to all interested a matter of general and grave
concern--the growing materialism of religious bodies. On all sides
self-constituted defenders of the faith are troubling themselves, not
with the faith but with the numbers of their adherents who have jobs,
equal sharers in emoluments, and so forth. A Protestant of standing
writes a book and proves his religion is one of efficiency; a Catholic
of equal standing quickly rejoins with another book to prove his
religion is also efficient; each blind to the fact that the resulting
campaign is disgraceful to both. When religion ceases to represent to us
something spiritual, and purely spiritual, we begin to drift away from
it. "Where thy treasure is, there thy heart is also." "No man can serve
God and Mammon." The modern rejoinder is familiar: "We must live." This,
our generation is not likely to forget. The grave concern is that
well-meaning men are accustoming themselves to this cry to sacrifice all
higher considerations for the "equal division of emoluments." Let us as
citizens and a community see that every man has the right and the means
to live; but when self-interested bodies start a rivalry in the name of
their particular creeds, we know it ends in a squalid greed and fight
for place, in a pursuit of luxury, the logical outcome of which must be
to make the world ugly, sordid and brutal. It would be a mistake to
overlook that high-minded men are allowing themselves to be committed
by plausible reasons to this growing evil. It is misguided enthusiasm.
There is a divine authority that warns us all: "Be zealous for the
better gifts."

IV

I wish to examine the attitude of the average Christian to the Agnostic.
"The world is falling away from religion," he will cry when depressed,
without thinking how much he himself may be a contributing cause. Let