uishable a thing, changing forces
and attitudes have still left untouched the hunger of the soul and the
need of men for faith. Indeed the very restlessness of the time, the
breaking up of the old orders, the failure of the old certainties, has,
if anything, deepened the demand for religious reality and there has
been in all directions a marked turning to whatever offered itself as a
plausible substitute for the old, and above all a turning to those
religions which in quite clearly defined ways promise to demonstrate the
reality of religion through some sensible or tangible experience. If
religion will only work miracles and attest itself by some sign or other
which he who runs may read there is waiting for it an eager
constituency. We shall find as we go on how true this really is, for the
modern religious cult which has gained the largest number of followers
offers the most clearly defined signs and wonders.

If religion cures your disease and you are twice persuaded, once that
you really are cured and once that religion has done it, then you have
something concrete enough to satisfy anybody. Or if, perplexed by death
and with no faith strong enough to pierce that veil through a persuasion
of the necessity of immortality established in the very nature of
things, you are offered a demonstration of immortality through the
voices and presences of the discarnate, then, once more, you have
something concrete enough, if only you were sure of it, to settle every
doubt. And finally, if the accepted religions are too concrete for you
and if you desire a rather vague and poetic approach to religion made
venerable by the centuries and appealingly picturesque through the
personalities of those who present it, you have in some adaptation of
oriental faith to occidental needs a novel and interesting approach to
the nebulous reality which passes in the Eastern mind for God, an
approach which demands no very great discipline and leaves a wide margin
for the play of caprice or imagination.

_Modern Religious Cults and Movements Find Their Opportunity in the
Whole Situation. The Three Centers About Which They Have Organized
Themselves_

There has been, then, as the outcome of the complex of forces which we
have been considering, a new approach to religion distinctive in our own
time and in general taking three directions determined by that against
which it has reacted, or perhaps more positively by the varying
character of what it