It may seem a curious way
for inducing harmony to set out to prove everyone in the wrong; but the
point is clear, not to attack what men believe but to ask them to
justify their words by their deeds. The request is not unreasonable and
it may be asked in a tone that will show the sincerity of him who makes
it and waken a kindred feeling in all earnest men. The world will be a
better place to live in, and we shall be all better friends when every
man makes a genuine resolve to give us all the example of a better life.
III
A development that would require a treatise in itself I will but touch
on, to suggest to all interested a matter of general and grave
concern--the growing materialism of religious bodies. On all sides
self-constituted defenders of the faith are troubling themselves, not
with the faith but with the numbers of their adherents who have jobs,
equal sharers in emoluments, and so forth. A Protestant of standing
writes a book and proves his religion is one of efficiency; a Catholic
of equal standing quickly rejoins with another book to prove his
religion is also efficient; each blind to the fact that the resulting
campaign is disgraceful to both. When religion ceases to represent to us
something spiritual, and purely spiritual, we begin to drift away from
it. "Where thy treasure is, there thy heart is also." "No man can serve
God and Mammon." The modern rejoinder is familiar: "We must live.
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