" This,
our generation is not likely to forget. The grave concern is that
well-meaning men are accustoming themselves to this cry to sacrifice all
higher considerations for the "equal division of emoluments." Let us as
citizens and a community see that every man has the right and the means
to live; but when self-interested bodies start a rivalry in the name of
their particular creeds, we know it ends in a squalid greed and fight
for place, in a pursuit of luxury, the logical outcome of which must be
to make the world ugly, sordid and brutal. It would be a mistake to
overlook that high-minded men are allowing themselves to be committed
by plausible reasons to this growing evil. It is misguided enthusiasm.
There is a divine authority that warns us all: "Be zealous for the
better gifts."
IV
I wish to examine the attitude of the average Christian to the Agnostic.
"The world is falling away from religion," he will cry when depressed,
without thinking how much he himself may be a contributing cause. Let
him study it in this light. What is his attitude? When he comes to speak
of the tendency of the age he will indulge in vague generalities about
atheism, socialism, irreligion, and the rest; always the cause is
outside of him, and against him; he is not part of it. I ask him to pass
by the atheist awhile and take what may be of more concern. There is a
type of Catholic and Protestant who has as little genuine religion in
him as any infidel, who does not deny the letter of the law, but who
does not observe its spirit, whose only use for the letter is to
criticise and harass adversaries.
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