Here, certainly, is an endeavor which is always of primary importance.
There is an abiding peril, forever crouching at the door of ancient
organizations, that they shall seek refuge from the difficulties of
thought in the opportunities of action. They need to be continually
reminded that reforms begin in the same place where abuses do,
namely, in the notion of things; that only just ideas can, in the
long run, purify conduct; that clear thinking is the source of
all high and sustained feeling. I wish that we might essay the
philosopher-theologian's task. This generation is hungry for
understanding; it perishes for lack of knowledge. One reason for
the indubitable decline of the preacher's power is that we have been
culpably indifferent in maintaining close and friendly alliances
between the science and the art, the teachers and the practitioners of
religion. Few things would be more ominous than to permit any further
widening of the gulf which already exists between these two. Never
more than now does the preacher need to be reminded of what Marcus
Aurelius said: "Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also shall be
thyself; for the soul is dyed by its thoughts."

But such an undertaking, calling for wide and exact scholarship, large
reserves of extra-professional learning, does not primarily belong
to a discussion within the department of practical theology. Besides
which there is a task, closely allied to it, but creative rather than
critical, prophetic rather than philosophic, which does fall within
the precise area of this field. I mean the endeavor to describe
the mind and heart of our generation, appraise the significant
thought-currents of our time. This would be an attempt to give some
description of the chief impulses fermenting in contemporary society,
to ask what relation they hold to the Christian principle, and to