s no dark problem of salvation."

To such optimists the intensely religious often respond with that
strange horror and, repugnance which only very close agreement can
make possible. Near spiritual kin can war together with a bitterness
that mutual strangers cannot share. In this case, {174} as you see,
the goal is the same for both parties to the controversy. Both want to
reach some highest good. The cheerful optimists simply feel sure of
being able to reach, through action, what the earnestly devout are
passionately seeking by the aid of faith. Yet each side may regard the
other with a deep sense of sacred aversion. "Fanatic!" cries the
partisan of duty to his religious brother. "Mere moralist," retorts
the other, and feels that no ill name could carry more well-founded
opprobrium. The issue involved is indeed both delicate and momentous.

The same issue may become only graver in its intensity when, in a
given case, a religious man and a moralist agree as to _both_ of the
main postulates of religion, so that for both there is a highest good
to seek and a great peril to avoid. For now the question arises: What
way leads to salvation?

Suppose that the answer to this question seems, at any point in the
development of human insight, simply doubtful. Suppose mystery
overhangs the further path that lies before both the religious
inquirer and the moralist. In such a case the religious interest meets
at least a temporary defeat. The religious inquirer must acknowledge
that he is baffled. But just this defeat of the religious interest
often seems to be the moralist's opportunity. "You cannot discover
your needed superhuman truths," he then says. "You cannot touch
heaven. You remain but a man. But at all events you can {175} do a
man's work, however hard that work is, however opposed it is to your
natural sloth and degradation, however great the danger of perdition.
Perhaps nobody knows the way of salvation. But a man can know and can
daily do each day's duty. He does not know how to attain the goal. But
he knows what the goal is, and it is better to die striving for the
goal than to live idly gazing up into heaven." In such a case, even if
the moralist fully recognises the depth of our need of salvation, and
the greatness of the danger, still the strenuous pursuit of duty often
seems to him to be a necessary substitute for religion. And then the
moralist may regard his own position as the only one that befits a
truth-loving