cannot
stand a careful examination, they represent what must be corrected and
cannot be absorbed. Christianity can absorb New Thought far more easily
than Christian Science. Theosophy in its extremer forms it cannot absorb
at all. It is more hospitable to the quest for a universal religion for
it seeks itself to be a universal religion and can never achieve its
ideal unless it takes account of the desire for something big enough to
include the whole of life, East as well as West, and to make room within
itself for a very great variety of religious tempers.

_But Christianity is Being Influenced by the Cults_

If Christianity is not to reabsorb the cults in their present form, it
must, as has been said over and over again, take account of them and it
is not likely to go on uninfluenced by them. Already it has yielded in
some directions to their contentions. If it feels itself challenged by
them it must meet that challenge not so much by intolerance as by the
correction of conditions which have made them possible, and here its
most dependable instruments are education and self-examination. There is
need of a vast deal more of sheer teaching in all the churches. The
necessity for congregations and the traditions of preaching conspire to
make the message of the Church far less vital than it ought to be.
Preaching is too much declamation and far too much a following of narrow
and deeply worn paths.

The cults themselves represent a craving for light, especially in the
regions of pain and loss. Historic Christianity has lost out because it
has made religion too self-centered, not that the cults are a corrective
here, for they are even more self-centered--that is one of their great
faults. The individual is not the center of the world; he is part of a
larger order concerned for great ends for which his life can only be
contributory. The Church and the cults together have forgotten too
largely that life is sacred only as we lose it. We need in the churches
generally a braver personal note and a very much larger
unself-centeredness.

It is interesting to note that the movement of the cults, with the
possible exception of New Thought, has been away from rationalism rather
than in the direction of it. This is a consideration to be taken into
account. It would seem on the surface of it to indicate that what people
are wanting in religion is not so much reason as mysticism and that for
the generality religion is most truly co