Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair”

and you will see what I mean.

Ideals of human wholes like the community, the nation, the Commonwealth of Man, merge indistinguishably into the conception of a greater life, the object of faith and hope, continuous in some way with ours, but immeasurably transcending it. The human mind must ever conceive some kind of a life of God or “kingdom of heaven” answering to its need of a satisfying universe. And this conception is of the same essence and spirit as that of social wholes, which partake of this continuity, make a like appeal to faith and hope, and a like demand for devotion and sacrifice. If we put aside formal doctrine it seems clear that the kind of religion the modern world appears to be embracing, one which feels what is upward and onward in human life as our part in the life of God, is a kind of higher patriotism, hardly separable from our nobler ideals of our country. And patriotism, as it becomes exalted in times of trial, takes on a religious spirit.

It seems likely that social and religious worship, if I may use that term for both, will draw together again and abandon that somewhat artificial separation which political exigencies have brought about. I do not mean that ancient institutions now associated with them will lose their separate identity, so that we shall have a state church or an ecclesiastical state; forms of organization persist; but it would not be surprising if a growing unity of spirit and principle should bring the two into practical co-operation.

In the public schools the children learn group forms of play, in which they are accustomed to strive for a whole, and to put its success above their private aims; and they come to feel also that their personality is inseparable from the life of the community of which the school is a part. The spirit of mutual aid and public service should pass easily from the playground to the city, the state, and the nation. Along with this we look for a rise of communal art, in the form of music, plays, pageants, and municipal decoration, which shall enlist the feelings and hallow the larger life with cherished associations. To this we may add whatever ritual of patriotism shall be found expressive of the national spirit, a spirit animated, we hope, by membership in an international federation. And it is only a continuation of this enlarging membership and service to go on, by the aid of symbols and worship, from these visible social wholes to the invisible wholes, also social, of religious faith, to the Great Life in which our life is merged.

On the other side we see the church and the institutions connected with it reaching out toward social ideals and functions, recognizing that the salvation of the individual, possible only through that of society, calls for co-operation and service, without which worship is partial and unreal.

Indeed this spirit, whether we call it religious or social, is by no means confined to the visible institutions of the state or the church. It belongs to the spirit of the time, and may be felt in the several branches of learning, in philanthropy, in socialism, in the labor movement, and in the world of industry and trade. The conditions of life favor it, and in spite of all setbacks we may expect it to have an irresistible growth.

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