deprive them, an ideal sufficient to inspire mankind--the
supreme worthiness of the good life. While the creeds of the Churches
divide their respective adherents from each other, here, they tell us,
is a basis upon which all can unite, and which therefore {172} should
assuredly prove adequate and attractive; nay, since religion is valued
for the kind of life it produces--since the tree is judged neither by
its name, nor age, nor foliage, but simply and solely by its
fruit--shall we not say that morality itself is the true and only
religion, that residuum of valid and vital truth which remains when all
the errors of supernaturalism have been purged and filtered away?
Certainly there are those in our own day who, while definitely
rejecting the sanctions and authority of religion in its commonly
accepted meaning, are fully convinced that to live an unselfish life is
a duty incumbent on man, and who honestly endeavour to practise what
they believe. That being so, is not faith shown to be practically
superfluous, and the autonomy and sufficiency of ethics a demonstrated
fact?

Such, in short, is the contention of the Ethical Movement, so ably and
often eloquently represented by leaders like Felix Adler, W. M. Salter,
Washington Sullivan, Stanton Coit, and others; all these teachers with
one accord deprecate and dismiss theological doctrines as at best not
proven, at worst a hindrance, and commend instead morality as the
all-embracing, all-sufficing and all-saving religion. To quote Mr.
Salter, who certainly speaks with authority for his side:--

A religion that will teach us how to live, that will hold up clear and
high the laws of life and win us to obedience {173} to them--this is
the religion the world needs, and it is the only true religion; all
others, all that seek to make something else sacred, that make men put
their trust in "God" or Christ or the Virgin or the Bible or the Church
or its sacraments and rites, are a diverting of man from the real
issue; they are the blind leading of the blind; they are a delusion and
a snare.[1]

Mr. Salter is, indeed, willing to show "charity" for the belief "that
the authority of the right is in some way connected with God"; but it
is the charity that may be extended to an exploded superstition on
account of certain beneficent associations that cling to it. "If by
the term 'God,'" he says,[2] "was meant simply the reason and nature of
things, it might perhaps be freely