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Show rP10 present tremendous anti-spiritual movement imports intellectual suicide. Cdfh ' Practical godliness, the life of selfishness or superficiality, is not new. Every age has Jjft Out been burdened by the multitude who seem mm not to know or care if thoy have a spiritual lgI10rdIlC6 nature or possibility. But to-day this takes C1rmfa shape in definite teaching, both through tho philosophy of profound and scholarly thinkers, as Knuckle and MctchnikolT nnd By Rev. Thomas Edward Barr, Marx, and in the vigorous propaganda of peopit'i Pulpit. Hiiwiukce. -I materialistic socialism, which wipes God H and tho soul life off the board as negligible factors. Tho battleground of social progress is now, as always, the human heart. This is tho citadel to which advancing intelligence has driven the demons of greed and tyranny, cruelty and passion. Until that is mastered, civilization is at the samo peril which has overthrown tho greatest nation in the past. For that mastery tho soul lifo must furnish weapons and methods. Three fallacies mark the faulty thinking which so afllicts us now. Better conditions will make better men. Is it true? Ifeligion hns always urged that beUcr men will make better conditions; and that unless men arc better in heart improved conditions are not a lasting benefit. If ns you hotter conditions,' you can carry along a commensurate culture of tho soul life, a deepening love and reverence, shown in honor and justico and kindness, then progress is secure. . But that is not tho logic. This is tho argument: Because, when a small percentage of a nation become rich and powerful they become wasteful waste-ful and oppressive nnd debauch tho nation, therefore, if all tho people became rich and powerful they would not fall into theso snares. Again, it is assumed that because religion, especially Christianity, hns thus far been coincident with great social evils, therefore these evils are tho fruit of religion and indorsed by it. When wo reply that religion, like law nnd science, has been the struggle of tho soul lifo for mastery, then wo nro told thnt becnuse religion hns thus far failed of completo success it should bo thrown overboard. Thus humanity is to cut off its wings, blind its eyes and deafen its cars to nil the appeals of its higher nature, and then expect to escape tho pit in which the glorious civilizations of long ago were plunged when they forgot God. cl-x gcLvziAsC 3astA, |