an actual
adventure in the making of religion. The cults and movements have not
been thus limited. They have challenged old understandings, broken away
from the older organizations and taken their own line, using such
material as seems proper for their purpose.

They are not wholly independent of the past; some of them have taken the
immemorial speculations of the East for their point of departure though
introducing therein a good many of the permissions or conclusions of
modern science and something of the spirit of Christianity itself. Those
taking their departure from Christianity have claimed rather to
reinterpret and modernize it than to supplant it by their own creations.
Yet when all this is recognized these cults and movements are
particularly the creation of our own time. So accepted, they reveal
strongly the persistence of religion. All these conjectures and
confidences and reachings through the shadows are just a testimony that
few are content to go on without some form of religion or other.

All religion has, in one phase or another, gone through much the same
process. There has been for every religion a time when it took new form
out of older elements, a time when the accepted religions had little
enough sympathy for and understanding of what was taking place about
them while those committed to new quests were exultant in the
consciousness of spiritual adventure and discovery and heard the morning
stars sing together for joy. What is thus begun must submit always to
the testimony of time. In the end a religion is permanent as it meets
the great human needs and adjusts itself to their changing phases. It is
imperial and universal as it meets these needs supremely. If in addition
it be capable of organization, if there be within it room for expansion,
and if, on the whole, it justifies itself by the outcome of it in life
and society it will persist, and if it persists through a long period of
time and creates for itself literatures, dogmas and authorities, it
becomes as nearly fundamental as anything can be in this world. It
creates cultures, shapes civilizations, colours art, establishes ideals
and fills the whole horizon of its devotees.

If a religion is to endure it must meet a wide range of need; it must be
plastic and yet invest itself with the sanctions of History. For the
conservative it must possess the note of authority and at the same time
promise freedom to the liberal. It must persuade the forw