obedience to duty as they saw it, almost absolute.

The Bible exerted a tremendous influence. It was not only their
religious guide and teacher, but was also their library, daily
companion and for some time their only literature. It became
wrought into the very fibre of their thought.

This dominating religious attitude, while modified in the
different types--the Friends, Huguenots, Moravians--gave the
impulses which have had so strong a formative influence upon the
life of the nation.

Recognizing fully the incalculable value of this early religious
contribution, we cannot fail also to realize the limitations of
the religious outlook of that period, and the effect of these
limitations upon the social life of the country. Seventeenth
century religion laid its emphasis upon the subjective--upon
definitions of religious belief--and found expression in theological
discussion and opinion. It concerned itself intensely with the
individual as regards his spiritual life, but took little or no
account of the outward conditions that bear so powerfully upon
the inner life. Thus in its growth the church failed to exercise
that commanding influence in the redemption of society and the
_forming_ of social conditions which should have accompanied the
preaching of individual salvation.

It entered deeply, reverently, passionately into the spirit of the
first commandment: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might," but failed in
holding with equal grasp the second, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor