Article July 18, 1903 Issue

Religious Items

with contributions from Hugh Price Hughes, Elsworth Lawson, Bonaventura

Professor Edward C. Moore of the Harvard Divinity School, speaking at the recent Unitarian Festival in Boston, said, as reported in The Christian Register:—

"The isolation of theology is over. The times are passed in which religion was deemed a concern by itself. Religion is the doing of good in love. Theology is nothing more nor less than the adjustment of such thoughts as men have concerning religion to their other thoughts, and that adjustment is best achieved where these thoughts are at their freshest and most intense. The supremacy of theology is disputed by many. But even those who believe in its supremacy believe that it must vindicate its leadership as other departments of learning, as men and institutions vindicate their superiority, in the actual work of the world and in contact and comparison among men.

"A friend said to me the other day, "The evils of our time will bring us round to religion.' Very possibly. But I should be sorry if that were the only outlook or hope that I had. The good of our time will bring us round to religion. The good of our time has brought us round to religion. The good of our time is religion. If a man's faithfulness in his daily work, I care not what that work may be, is not religion, then what is it? If a man's fulfilment of the duties of life to his family, neighbors, to the State, to mankind, is not religion, then what is religion? If the love of truth for truth's sake and the fearless obedience to it at any cost, in any task that may be set us, is not religion, then what is religion? And, if the institutions which call themselves religious are seen of men to exist in order that they may encourage, fortify, and uphold men in consecration to the life of duty which I have describe, to aid men to the life which is religious and to the religion which is life, then, I say, men will come round to our institutions of religion."

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