e in his world-scheme rejected metaphysics and
theology alike as belonging to the infantile stage of man, and recognized
as legitimate only the "positive" knowledge which science affords. For
the emotional and ethical needs of man, he offered "the religion of
humanity," with the service of mankind as its worship and woman as its
priestess. Spencer, equally discarding the supernatural as matter of
knowledge, relegates the distinctively religious emotion to awe before a
supreme power wholly inscrutable to man. He sets himself to formulate so
far as possible the observed workings of the universe in which man is a
part; he makes Evolution the central principle; he finds in Heredity and
Environment the great formative influences upon the individual; and he
reaffirms as of supreme importance the familiar ethical principles which
mankind has discovered in its experiences.

In all these forms, the constructive philosophy of our century has
visibly fallen short of the immense volume of old and new truths which it
has striven to mould and formulate. The characteristic genius of the
time is shown more powerfully on the one hand in the accumulation of
specific knowledge, as science; and on the other hand in the imaginative
portrayal of human life. The favorite vehicle of imagination has been
the novel. If our successors hereafter desire to know how man in the
nineteenth century appeared to himself, their best guides will be such as
Scott, Hawthorne, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Hugo, Balzac. It is
the children of Bacon and those of Shakspere who are most conspicuous in
the work of yesterday. To-day we seem to stand on the threshold of a
more inclusive, more profound, more inspiring philosophy.

The Christian church has, like all other institutions, been deeply
affected by the time-spirit. In Protestantism, the great developments
have been a modification of the creed, and a transfer of energy from the
winning of a future salvation to the working out of a present salvation
for the individual and for society. The creed has been changed, in
spirit more widely than in form, partly under the influence of reason and
partly through a reawakening of spiritual and humane feeling.
Schleiermacher interpreted Christianity as an emotional and ethical
experience, rather than a dogmatic system. In the English church, while
one refluent wave swept toward a dogmatic authority and ritualistic
splendor like that of Rome, on another sid