But if men find their salvation in love for, and loyalty to, values of various kinds, the practical question { 220} becomes that of the furtherance and support of these values. What are some of the social conditions of a noble life? Surely education, opportunity and free association. It is no longer granted to trust the coming of a supernatural grace which will illuminate life. Such subjective illumination is only too apt to reflect the temperament of the individual and to lack that training and breadth of interest which only education and opportunity for a varied experience can give. Many of the values which we prize most highly to-day need the soil of culture and of a complex civilization before they will flourish. To distribute them widely is the dearest hope of a democracy which looks beyond the merely political aspects of social institutions. But such a distribution is a goal which has conditions which must be mastered by the bending of a keen social intelligence into the service of a genuine desire for the extension of well-used leisure. I mean that the task of modern democracy is the securing of economic well-being and a fair degree of leisure for the mass of the citizens in order that they may have the time, the energy, and the opportunity to develop themselves and to put themselves coöperatively into touch with the pleasant and creative side of life. But I have already touched upon these problems of social method and aim in another volume.[2]
It is time that I discussed a question which, I have no doubt, has been hovering in the background of many a reader's mind. Is it justifiable to retain the term religion when its ancient setting has been so completely discarded? I have myself asked this question many a { 221} time. For many years, I felt that it would be better to give up the word entirely as indissolubly bound up with those ideas and beliefs which the modern trained mind is outgrowing. But I could not hide from myself the fact that the consciousness of the time was beginning to employ it in a freer and more constructive way. It had sensed the element of devotion and loyalty which religion had, in spite of its many shortcomings, nourished. How common the phrase is that a man has made a religion of some interest! The socialist is said to make a religion of socialism, the social reformer of his work of constructive philanthropy, the artist of his art. We mean that he has thrown himself whole-heartedly into some one of these fields. And, positively, this means that he has found that concrete and living salvation which ideal effort always brings to a man. He is filled with the spirit of consuming loyalty to what he values. He has left the mere conventionalities, the run of use-and-wont behind and has exalted himself with a living purpose which illuminates and concentrates his being. I think that this spirit and attitude is coming to be called religious, no matter to what objects it attaches itself. Have we not here a mark of identity which justifies the retention of the age-old word? Morality is too cold a word in the ears of most men. Besides, moral values are only a part of the immense throng of appreciations to which man responds. There is need of a comprehensive term, able to take in all those interests and activities which give life its variety and glory. Is there a better term than religion?