the other,
are not relations easy to define with entire clearness. Some men in
our age, as you know, tell you that they are unable, in their present
state of mind, to get much help from religion. And some men who insist
that the religious problems have for them no solution whatever, are
ardently and sincerely dutiful in spirit. On the other hand, there are
those who, in their own minds, are so sure of salvation that they
actually make light of the call of duty, or at least {169} see little
that is saving in the thought of duty. In the opinion of very many, no
effort to lead a dutiful life can lead to salvation unless some sort
of divine grace, which is a free gift from above, intervenes to
accomplish the saving process. Meanwhile, there are those who declare
not only that the dutiful life tends of itself to lead to salvation,
but that the persistent doing of our duty is precisely the whole of
what constitutes salvation.

You will readily see that the plan of these lectures forbids any
direct study of the Pauline doctrine regarding the relation of faith
to works, of divine grace to human dutifulness. The mere mention of
St. Paul, however, side by side with the reminder that, at many times
in history, and especially to-day, there are those for whom, despite
Paul's teaching as to the vanity of mere works, there is no religion
but the religion of duty, will serve to show that serious questions
are here involved, and that the true relations between religion and
morality are by no means self-evident.

Let me briefly distinguish between the religious interest and the
moral interest. Then we may be able to recognise how closely they are
related, and yet how far, under certain conditions, they may drift
apart, and how sharply they may sometimes come to be opposed.

{170}

II

There is an obvious contrast between the points of view from which
morality and religion consider the problem of life. Whatever may be
your views as to what your duty is, it is plain that the moral
interest centres about this idea of duty. That is, the moral interest
seeks to define right deeds and to insist that they shall be done. It
estimates the rightness of deeds with reference to some ideal of life.
But however it conceives this ideal, it makes its main appeal to the
active individual. It says: "Do this." The religious interest, on the
other hand, centres about the sense of need, or, if it is successful
in finding t