emselves, to its continuous
growth.

Crowds of new phenomena are now demanding entry into the divine city of
religion. There is, first of all, science, undertaking to present us
with a morality conforming to the Gospel teachings, which it claims
have become a dead letter. But if twenty centuries of Christianity
have not transformed human nature, neither has science. Materialism
and commercialism have failed just as the Church, with her spirit of
exclusion and domination, has failed. The fact that all these have
worked separately and in hostility to one another is perhaps the
reason, for mutual understanding and respect, once established between
them, might well result in a new revelation worthy of the new humanity
which shall emerge from this tragic age. A superior idealism, at once
religious, social and scientific, must sooner or later bring new light
and warmth to the world, for a world-crisis which has shaken the very
foundations of our existence cannot leave intact its logical corollary,
faith, in whose vicinity threatening clouds have long been visible. As
at the dawn of Christianity, the whole world has seemed to be rent by
torturing doubts and by the menace of an approaching end. After having
been preserved from destruction by Christ for two thousand years, it
suddenly found itself in the throes of the most appalling upheaval yet
experienced, with the majority of its inhabitants engaged in a
murderous war. The dream of human brotherhood, glimpsed throughout the
centuries, seemed to be irretrievably threatened, and once more arose
the age-old question as to how the Reign of Love was to be introduced
upon earth.

The present era shows other striking analogies to the early days of
Christianity, as, for instance, in the democratic movement tending to
establish the sovereignity of the people. But it is no longer
exceptional men, like prophets, who proclaim the dawn of the age of
equality, but the masses themselves, under the guidance of their chosen
leaders. In the book of Enoch the Son of Man tears kings from their
thrones and casts them into Hell; but this was only an isolated seer
daring to predict misfortune for those who built their palaces "with
the sweat of others." The old-time prophets desired to reduce the rich
to the level of the poor, and a man denuded of all worldly goods was
held up as an ideal to be followed. This naturally necessitated
mendicity, and it was not till some centuries had p