The best living unites us closely and mysteriously with some greater whole of which we are a part. The three great faculties are knowledge, conduct, love. Knowledge finds always new objects, new connections, a more perfect and wonderful whole. Right conduct brings a sense of being in true relations,—of fulfilling some high destiny. Love blends the individual with the universal; its successive steps are the highest form of human education.
Christianity was a feminine religion in its virtues, as purity and tenderness; and also in its attitude of pure dependence, submission, petition. The masculine elements have not been duly recognized as religious, even when having a great place in the actual working of things,—self-reliance, physical hardihood, civic virtue, the pursuit of truth.
In her subject state, woman has learned piety. She brings that as she emerges into her free state, her gift to man, as his to her is strength and self-reliance.
The moral power of the dogmatic systems has been very limited. They pretended to all knowledge and all power, but they have only gone a little way to sweeten and purify human life. The "enthusiasm of humanity" advances society farther in a decade than the old religion did in a century.
We are taught by scientists the extreme slowness with which races have improved. But do we know how fast races or families can improve if brought in contact with the most helpful influences of other races or families? Has that experiment ever been fairly tried? Do not results with hardened convicts, with Indian and negro pupils, suggest that there may be an immense acceleration of moral progress?
Different classes of minds require different religions. A multitude require the pictorial faith and the absolute authority of the Catholic church. A great many require the divine-human figure of Christ. A certain class of minds will be pantheistic. To some the wonders of the physical world will be the most impressive revelation. Natures strong in spiritual insight will be transcendentalists. Those in whom personal affection is profound will have the gospel of "In Memoriam" and Lucy Smith. Active, serviceable, unimaginative men will often be content with a cheerful agnosticism. Some, after pushing their inquiry to the farthest, and keeping it united with right living, will rest in "devout and contented uncertainty."
The advance of knowledge has been the great fact of the world's intellectual life for the past century.
The increase by this means of material good; the upward push of the people, strengthened by knowledge and by prosperity won through knowledge; the widening and deepening of human sympathy,—these are the great social facts.
The imminent situation is that knowledge has destroyed the old religious basis, and is only just beginning to construct a new religious cultus. Socially, the common people seem on the point of a great advance, while the too eager push for material good brings temporarily a moral injury.
Among the constructive forces are: a knowledge of man and the world which enables us to build on broader foundations than Jesus or St. Francis; a vivified sense of humanity which gives the emotional force which is always the strongest dynamic factor; and a new sense of natural beauty which feeds the religious life and imparts peace.