secular processes was, therefore, a great stimulus to liberty of production, trade, and human intercourse. But this liberation was not the only service rendered by Protestantism. It had a more positive contribution in the value its Churches set upon certain economic virtues which were needed to promote successful business. In particular industry, honesty (the best policy), and thrift from sober living, gave a spiritual sanction to successful business, and incidentally assisted to promote co-operation for profitable business ends. But upon the whole Protestantism made for the dissociation of the religious from the secular life, the weekday ethics from the Sabbath, and as time went on reduced religion to a set of ideals, rules, and dogmas which had less and less reality in the ordinary ways of men. The Sunday parade of the Sermon on the Mount is regarded by most Christians to-day as a beautiful ethic which has no real application to any department of secular conduct.
But while the full substance of this Eastern faith is now widely recognized as impracticable for an operative principle in the Western world, whether Catholic or Protestant in profession, it is not right to conclude that religion in its broader spiritual and philosophic sense is disappearing or weakening. If religion be taken to signify man’s emotional concern for his life as a moral and rational personality in an ever enlarging human society, and his interest in the discovery of an order in the Universe, to which man
