of other races or
families? Has that experiment ever been fairly tried? Do not results
with hardened convicts, with Indian and negro pupils, suggest that
there may be an immense acceleration of moral progress?

Different classes of minds require different religions. A multitude
require the pictorial faith and the absolute authority of the Catholic
church. A great many require the divine-human figure of Christ. A
certain class of minds will be pantheistic. To some the wonders of the
physical world will be the most impressive revelation. Natures strong
in spiritual insight will be transcendentalists. Those in whom
personal affection is profound will have the gospel of "In Memoriam"
and Lucy Smith. Active, serviceable, unimaginative men will often be
content with a cheerful agnosticism. Some, after pushing their inquiry
to the farthest, and keeping it united with right living, will rest in
"devout and contented uncertainty."

The advance of knowledge has been the great fact of the world's
intellectual life for the past century.

The increase by this means of material good; the upward push of the
people, strengthened by knowledge and by prosperity won through
knowledge; the widening and deepening of human sympathy,--these are the
great social facts.

The imminent situation is that knowledge has destroyed the old
religious basis, and is only just beginning to construct a new
religious cultus. Socially, the common people seem on the point of a
great advance, while the too eager push for material good brings
temporarily a moral injury.

Among the constructive forces are: a knowledge of man and the world
which enables us to build on broader foundations than Jesus or St.
Francis; a vivified sense of humanity which gives the emotional force
which is always the strongest dynamic factor; and a new sense of
natural beauty which feeds the religious life and imparts peace.

The immediate future is uncertain,--the barbarian invasion and the
religious wars may have a parallel in another period of disasters. But
the large onward movement is clear, and the personal ideal was never at
once so reasonable and so ardent as now. Though storms should rise
high, faith and hope may hold fast, remembering that

"all the past of Time reveals
A bridal dawn of thunder-peals
Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact."

Democracy is just a continuation of the upward push which out of the
mollusk has made man. Altruis