THE MODERN MIND 373
changes are taking place in religious ideas and in religious experience. It must be so in view of such a profound change in the conditions of human life. Every thoughtful man can readily sympathize with those earnest souls who are deeply apprehensive as to the future of spiritual religion. It is no wonder that it should appear to many good men as if modern tendencies are putting in peril the fundamental truths of Christianity. Unquestionably it is a time for most serious consideration; and the complacency of the easy going optimism which can see no danger anywhere is far more irritating than reassuring. But surely a pessimistic in terpretation of those modern tendencies is not the only possible one, and is not necessary. A far greater em phasis must and will be placed upon the ethical and social aspects of religion, both in thought and in experience. But does that indicate the decline of religion or the disappearance of Christianity? May we not conclude that it points rather in the opposite direction ? Christianity originated in an age not unlike this, though one by no means so far removed from primitive conditions. It took root first and most vigorously in cities and achieved its greatest triumphs among people who lived in an environment largely human and humanly controlled. The great ideal which in the New Testament epoch lay like a rosy cloud on the horizon of the future was that of a redeemed and glorified city life. But the primitive modes of thought still remaining in that civilization had already begun to modify Christianity to its disadvantage, when the barbarian invasion swept Europe back into condi tions almost as primitive as those which marked the tribal societies from which the ancient world had developed. Christianity then almost entirely lost its original simplicity and was corrupted by the elaboration of imposing cere monies many of them thought of as having a magical potency which dwarfed its ethical and social meaning ; and was perverted by the establishment of a priesthood which administered the magical rites and interposed itself between God and the common people. Notwithstanding the present
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