ot for ourselves alone but for others, even at cost
to ourselves; to control our lower natures by our higher natures; to
feel a relation with the Supreme,--these were the aims and inspirations
of the earlier Christianity; and they remain, but with enlarged and new
application.

Science has not penetrated to the inner secret of life, which is best
reached by other approaches. But it has enormously affected all
thinking by the discovery of Evolution. The recognition of growth--a
gradual, causal process--in mankind's whole advance, alters the entire
face of history and prophecy. Just as it eliminates supernaturalism
from the past, so it guides present progress and inspires while it
moderates anticipation of the future.

There grows the sense of some unfathomable unity. Creator and creature
are not sharply separated, as by the theologians: they are even more
closely united than the "father" and "son" of Jesus. So, too, the
unity of humanity--of all souls--until the idea of personal immortality
blends with some dimly conceived but greater reality.

It is impossible to portray under a single image the ideal of to-day,
because many ideals coexist. There is infinite difference of moral
development, as many characters as there are men; the variety of the
spiritual world is like that of the material world, and the diversity
gives richness and charm. And the forward movement of the ages is
immeasurably complex. Yet certain broad movements are traceable.

"Do right and fear nothing," was the word of Stoicism.

"God is holy; be ye holy," was the word of Hebraism, growing clearer,
stamping itself by institutions and inheritance.

"God is love; love ye," was the word of Christianity. The life of
Jesus was the symbol of that idea, and gave impulse and law to the new
society.

It was in keeping with the Stoic doctrine of Providence, but it came
through the imagination to the heart, more powerful than the calm
utterance of reason.

The Christian sense of sin was the intense force to rouse the ancient
world from its easy-going content. It was necessary that purity should
become a passion. The dogma of depravity was the intellectual
exaggeration of this. A God who died to save men from sin and hell was
its natural counterpart.

When the church had worked under the control of these ideas for fifteen
hundred years, there woke again in mankind the sense of joy, beauty,
knowledge, as good in themselves and God-give