istic doctrines, but is owing to the
development of the religious sentiment itself. Instead of tending to an
abrogation of that sentiment, it may be expected to ennoble its
emotional manifestations and elevate its intellectual conceptions.

Some of these influences are historical, as the repeated disappointments
in the second coming of Christ, and the interest of proselytizing
churches to interpret this event allegorically. Those which I deem of
more importance, however, are such as are efficient to-day, and probably
will continue to be the main agents in the immediate future of religious
development. They are:

(1.) The recognition of the grounds of ethics.

(2.) The recognition of the cosmical relations.

(3.) The clearer defining of life.

(4.) The growing immateriality of religious thought.

(1.) The authority of the Law was assumed in the course of time by most
Christian churches, and the interests of morality and religion were
claimed to be identical. The Roman church with its developed casuistry
is ready to prescribe the proper course of conduct in every emergency;
and if we turn to many theological writers of other churches, Dick's
_Philosophy of Religion_ for instance, we find moral conduct regarded as
the important aim of the Christian life. Morality without religion,
works without faith, are pronounced to be of no avail in a religious,
and of very questionable value in a social sense. Some go so far as to
deny that a person indifferent to the prevailing tenets of religion can
lead a pure and moral life. Do away with the belief in a hereafter of
rewards and punishments, say these, and there is nothing left to
restrain men from the worst excesses, or at least from private sin.

Now, however, the world is growing to perceive that morality is
separable from religion; that it arose independently, from a gradual
study of the relations of man to man, from principles of equity inherent
in the laws of thought, and from considerations of expediency which
deprive its precepts of the character of universality. Religion is
subjective, and that in which it exerts an influence on morality is not
its contents, but the reception of them peculiar to the individual.
Experience alone has taught man morals; pain and pleasure are the forms
of its admonitions; and each generation sees more clearly that the
principles of ethics are based on immutable physical laws. Moreover, it
has been shown to be dangerous to rest morality