the {255} prestige of
morality. As an institution, it is the appointed guardian and medium of
that supreme value which is hidden from the world; of that finality
which, in the course of human affairs, is so easily lost to view and so
infrequently proved. It is therefore the function of the religious
leader to make men lovers, not of the parts, but of the whole of
goodness. Embarrassed by their very plenitude of life, men require to
have the good-will that is in them aroused and put in control. This,
then, is the work of religion: to strike home to the moral nature itself,
and to induce in men a keener and more vivid realization of their latent
preference for the higher over the lower values. This office requires
for its fulfilment a constructive moral imagination, a power to arouse
and direct the contagious emotions, and the use of the means of
personality and ritual for the creation of a sweetening and uplifting
environment.

In culture and religion human life is brought to the elevation which is
proper to it. They are both forms of discipline through which is
inculcated that quality of magnanimity and service which is the mark of
spiritual maturity. But while culture is essentially contemplative,
far-seeing, sensitive, and tolerant, religion is more stirring and vital.
Both are love of perfection, but culture is admiration; religion,
concern. {256} "Not he that saith Lord, Lord, but he that doeth the will
of his Father, shall be saved." In religion the old note of fear is
always present. It is a perpetual watchfulness lest the work of life be
undone, or lest a chance for the best be forfeited.

{257}

NOTES

CHAPTER I

[1] Joseph Butler: _Sermon VII_, edited by Gladstone, p. 114. _Cf._
also _Sermon X_, on Self-Deceit.

[2] Nietsche: _Beyond Good and Evil_, translated by Helen Zimmern, p.
174.

[3] Edmund Burke: _A Vindication of Natural Society_, Preface, pp. 4,
5. (Boston, 1806.)

[4] The classic discussion of the whole matter is to be found in
Aristotle's _Nicomachean Ethics_, Book I, Chapters I-VI, translated by
J. E. C. Welldon. _Cf._ also Fr. Paulsen: _System of Ethics_, Book II,
Chapters I, II, translated by Frank Thilly; G. H. Palmer: _The Nature
of Goodness_, Chapters I, II; and W. James: _The Moral Philosopher and
the Moral Life_, in his _Will to Believe_.

[5] The issue is presented clearly and briefly in Paulsen: _Op. cit._,
Book II, Chapter II, and in James's _Principles of