nations can obtain possession of
new territory is to do it under the name of a protectorate,
sugar-coating, as has been said, the deeds of tyranny. If the dungeon
has been rifled of its prey, if cruelty has been scourged out of the
land, if despotism tottered, it is because society was slowly climbing
up that stairway, of which the first step is fear and the last is love.

In these January days our earth, snow-clad and frost-bound, seems like
a huge ball of ice. Yet all unconsciously to itself, the earth is
being swept on into spring and summer. Unconsciously, but none the
less truly, society, under the silent and secret impulse of the great
God, has been journeying upward toward the time when love shall fulfill
every law; when kindness and sympathy shall be organized in manners and
customs. All the revolutions of the past, all the clangor of war, all
the tumbling down of Bastilles, all the piling up of cities, is as
nothing to the advance of the world toward that era when love shall
perfect man's institutions and civilization.

Love also perfects religion. It is the glory of Christ that he unveils
the sovereignty of character and crowns manhood with all-maturing and
all-perfecting love. Looking backward, man finds that all religions
fall into four classes: There is the religion of fear and force, when
man offers sacrifices to appease the gods and conciliate justice.
There is the religion of law, when men reduce life to formal rules, and
the Pharisee rigorously fulfills his duty as chief, or trader, or
friend. There is the religion of romanticism, when men of powerful
intellect and strong imagination evolve their ideal and, withdrawing to
some cave, give themselves to reverie. In all such self becomes an
orb, so large as to eclipse brother man and God. Last of all there is
the religion of Christ, in which love is root, blossom and fruitage.
It aims at the development and unfolding of everything that is gracious
in life, whatever strikes at admiration, whether it is in school, in
art, in song, in wit, in travel, in books; whatever is praiseworthy in
courage or endurance, whatever has fineness and sweetness and nobility;
all that belongs to the hero and patriot; all that belongs to the seer
and scholar; all that belongs to leadership in trade and commerce--all
these elements are to be united and carried upward into the sweetness
and purity of life, until the full man, standing apart and standing
above life, seem