In spite of the conflict between the rising view of man and nature and the traditional religious conception, there is yet, I believe, a profound continuity in the genuinely spiritual achievements of humanity. It is a pity to be so ridden by the new that the noble in the old is forgotten. Tenderness and love, however obscured at times by formalism and bigotry, owe much to their nurture by Christianity. Hence, the deeper and truer interpretation of all past movements regards them as varying expressions of humanity's growth in social and mental stature. There is, in other words, no real discontinuity in human history. The only difference is, that the dynamic of social conditions and intellectual heritage has varied.
But this acknowledged continuity does not preclude that presence of genuine and effective newness which is revolutionary in its effects. _The perspective, intention, and elements of religion are about to alter_. In the following pages, I shall argue that the attachments of past religion were determined by a mythological, and essentially magical, idea of man's environment. Such attitudes and expectations as prayer, ritual, worship, immortality, providence, are expressions of the pre-scientific view of the world. But as man partly outgrows, partly learns to reject, the primitive thought of the world, this perspective and these elements will drop from religion. That this alteration has, in surprisingly large measure, already taken place can be seen from the following excerpts from the writings of the best known American authority on Church History: "Traditional Christian ideas, in fact, are undergoing extensive transformation as a result of the new social emphasis. The individualism of evangelicalism, with its primary concern for the salvation of the individual soul, is widely discredited. The old ascetic ideal is everywhere giving way to the social. Instead of holding themselves aloof from the world Christians are throwing themselves into it and striving to reform it. Holiness in the traditional sense of abstinence from sin is less highly valued than it was. The test of virtue is more and more coming to be the social test. The virtuous man is he who makes his influence tell for the improvement of society. Personal probity and uprightness, dissociated from the active service of one's fellows, is frequently regarded to-day as 'mere morality' was by the Evangelicals. As virtue had value to them only in union with and subordination to piety, so without the spirit of service { 7} personal morality seems to many a modern social reformer a mere empty husk."[1] Obviously, the center of religious gravity has altered tremendously from what it was in the Victorian Age. We are on the brink of a new period, the period of a realistic, and yet spiritual, social democracy.