The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-07-26
From the New York Times.

ShAASh IL lloAIuly lS lel dl1 lllt NOTlu 5 great religions, the religions that have lived and influenced the minds and the conduct of men, have had their mar tyrs. A religion of the common good, of the brotheh ood of man, of the love of God and ones neighbor is beautiful, but as Dr. Eliot formulates his creed, it fails somehow to take hold on the imagination, and in purely intellectu alistic soil no religion can strike it's roots deep enough to find the water of life. Much, very much depends upon what the ex-president of Harvard means by tho Hove of God" What is the God of the new religion? Dr. Eliot presents in these words his conception of the Being who Is to be the central thought of this religion:
 Now, let us consider the positive elements of this coming religion. new thought of God will be it's char acteristic. The twentieth century re- ligion accepts literally St. Paul's statement: Tn Him we live and move and have our beiM.' This new re- 1igion will be thoroughly monoth eistic.
 God will be so immanent that no in- termediary will be needed. For every man, God will be multiplication of infnites. The humane and worthy idea of God then will be the central thought of the new religion. This religion re- jects the idea that man is an alien or fallen being, who is hopelessly wicked. It finds such beliefs incon- sistent with a worthy idea of God. Man has always attributed to man a spirit associated with but independent of the body"
 This God is not apart from and ex- alted above the universe, He Is of it and it is of Him. He is "imnianent," but not transcendental. As we literally Hive and move and have our being" in Him we are part of Him. With that conception inborn sin and hopeless wickedness disappear of course.
 We have heard something of this new religion already. Prof. William James Hibbert lectures at Manchester college, recently published with the book title "A Pluralistic Universe" trace for us the philosoph lcal parent age of the new religion. Using the word spiritualism merely as the oppo- site of manterialism, and explaining the two subdivisions of his topic, the more intimate one of winch is monistic and the less intimate dualistic," Profes sor James says:
 "The dualistic species is the theism that reach ed it's elaboration in the sch plastic philosophy. while the mo- nistic species is the pantheism spoken of sometimes as 'post-Kantian' or 'ab- solute' idealism. Dualistic theism is professed as firmly as ever by all Catholic seats of learning, whereas it has of late years tended to disappear at our British and American univer- sities and to be replaced by monls- tic pantheism more or less open or dis guised. l have an impression that ever since T. H. Greens time absolute idealism has been decidedly in the as- cendant at Oxford. It is in the as- cendant at my own university at Har- yard.
 Absolute idealism attains, I said, to the more intimate point of view; but the statement needs some explanation. So far as theism represents the world as Gods world, and God as what Matthew Arnold called a magnified, non natural man, 1t would seem as if inner quality of the world remained human and as if our relations with it might be intimate enough-for what is best in ourselves appears then also outside of ourselves, and we and the universe are of the same spiritual species. So far, so good, then; and one might consequently ask, What more of intimacy do you require? To which the answer is that to be like thing is not as intimate a relation as to be substantially fused into 1t, to form one continuous soul and body with it; and that pantheistic idealism, making us entitatively one with God, attains this higher reach of intimacy. God as intimate soul and reason Of the universe has always seemed to some people a more worthy conception than God as external creator The theological machinery that spoke so livingly to our ancestors, With It's finite age of the world, its creation out of nothing, its judicial morality and schatology, it's relish for rewards and punishments, its treatment of God as an external contriver and an fntelli- gent moral governor sounds as odd to most of us as if 1t were some outland- ish savage religion. The vaster vistas which scientific evolutionism has opened, and the rising tide of social democratic ideals have changed the type of our imagination and the older monarchical theism Is obsolete or ob- solescent."
 So 1t Is in the imagination that this change has taken place? It is we'll to keep that in mind. The new religion is of the intellect. not of the heart, it seems. It Is an invention of the phi losophers. Philosophy concerns itself now chiefly with the strife between the materalistic and the spiritualistic in- depreciation of the universe. The spiritualistc faith Is loosened, but if we abandon that we go straight over into materialism, which, for Harvard, would be dreadfully bad form. So the intellectual philosophers devise mid dle ground, where we can still keep our faith in the unseen, can even talk about Jesus though not about Christ. This is not really recent invention, stroyer. which had~been warned to pre- pare. steamed swiftly in pursuit, but the flying man was faster, and soon left 1t