THE MODERN MIND 369
the Unitarian revolt does not seem to have been a result of the conditions now under consideration, but was rather a mecaphysical protest growing out of the logical difficulty involved in the doctrine of the trinity, and based upon con ceptions of God and man which modern conditions are pro foundly modifying. In the religious consciousness of men of this type the hiatus between the divine and the human seems very much less than to men of the earlier period. Man has not been deified, though some extremists go almost that far; nor has God been abased to the rank and propor tions of man, though His personality has been more humanly conceived. The complaint is not un frequently heard that people are not as reverent as they were in the olden time. In a certain sense the statement is true. But it is a mistake to attribute this wholly or mainly to a lack of respect for divine and holy things. It is just as likely to be due to an increased respect for man, a higher appreciation of the human, simply as such, and to the growing feeling that God is actuated by motives that human beings can understand and looks with kindly and sympathetic interest upon the ordinary human impulses and experiences of every sort. The sense of being in the presence of God does not under ordinary conditions repress the natural human impulses as it did in former times and under other circumstances. The most devout people gathered in a place dedicated to the worship of the Divine Being do not have the consciousness of the presence of a mysterious and awful majesty whose power is directed by purposes which lie wholly beyond the comprehension of men and into which it is presumption for them to inquire. There was a certain strain of vague terror characteristic of the earlier type of piety which seems to have almost disappeared from the religious experience of this age. How much we may have gained, and how much we may have lost, by this subtile climatic change in the religious life is a question for serious thought; but that such a change has been going on can hardly be questioned. Nor can it be doubted that the increasing importance of the human as
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