seeks. A pretty careful analysis of modern
religious cults and movements shows that they have organized themselves,
in action and reaction, around three centers definitely related to three
outstanding deficiencies of inherited faith. I say deficiencies, though
that is of course to beg the question. We saw earlier in this study how
religion everywhere and always grows out of some of the few central and
unexpectedly simple, though always supremely great, needs and how the
force of any religion waxes or wanes as it meets these needs. Religion
is real to the generality of us as it justifies the ways of God to man
and reveals the love and justice of God in the whole of personal
experience. Religion is always, therefore, greatly dependent upon its
power to reconcile the more shadowed side of experience with the Divine
love and power and goodness. It is hard to believe in a Providence whose
dealings with us seem neither just nor loving. Faith breaks down more
often in the region of trying personal experience than anywhere else.

All this is as old as the book of Job but it is none the less true
because it is old.

The accepted theology which explained sin and sorrow in terms of the
fall of man and covered each individual case with a blanket indictment
justified by the condemnation of the whole of humanity has lost its
force. It depended, to begin with, on a tradition of human beginnings
which has not borne examination, and it was beside, in spite of all the
efforts to defend it, profoundly unethical. Calvinistic theology,
moreover, made a difficult matter worse by assuming for every individual
a predestined fate reaching beyond death itself which a man was
powerless to escape. Those chapters in the long story of theology which
record the turning and groping of minds--and souls--enmeshed in this web
of their own weaving and more deeply entangled still in the challenging
experiences of life itself are among the most pathetic and arresting
in the whole story of human thought. We ought to recognize more clearly
than we have generally done and confess more frankly that our inherited
explanations of the problems of pain and sorrow have been markedly
unsatisfactory and have greatly contributed to the justifiable reaction
against them.

One group of modern religious cults and movements, then, has found its
opportunity just here. Christian Science and kindred cults are just an
attempt to reconcile the love and goodness of God with p