upon a thousand questions of great public importance, on the question
of forms of government, of social and educational necessities, of one's
course and attitude towards such great facts as the press, trusts,
housing, and the like, religion, as it is generally understood, gives
by itself no conclusive light. It may, no doubt, give a directing light
in some cases, but not a conclusive light. It leaves us inconsistent
and uncertain amidst these unavoidable problems. Yet upon these
questions most people feel that something more is needed than the mood
of the moment or the spin of a coin. Religious conviction may help us,
it may stimulate us to press for clearer light upon these matters, but
it certainly does not give us any decisions.

It is possible to be either intensely religious or utterly indifferent
to religious matters and yet care nothing for these things. One may be
a Pietist to whom the world is a fleeting show of no importance
whatever, or one may say, "Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-
morrow we die": the net result in regard to my need is the same. These
questions appear to be on a different plane from religion and religious
discussion; they look outward, while essentially religion looks inward
to the soul, and, given the necessary temperament, it is possible to
approach them in an unbiassed manner from almost any starting-point of
religious profession. One man may believe in the immortality of the
soul and another may not; one man may be a Swedenborgian, another a
Roman Catholic, another a Calvinistic Methodist, another an English
High Churchman, another a Positivist, or a Parsee, or a Jew; the fact
remains that they must go about doing all sorts of things in common
every day. They may derive their ultimate motives and sanctions from
the most various sources, they may worship in the most contrasted
temples and yet meet unanimously in the market-place with a desire to
shape their general activities to the form of a "public spirited" life,