Page:Genesis I-II- (IA genesisiii00grot).pdf/22

12 Christ's Kingdom shall come; the great misunderstood Kingdom when purity and reason will prevail, and before which all prejudices will disappear. Before it can come, indeed, all selfishness must be banished from our souls. We must look abroad over the barriers of all beliefs, becoming, in a true sense, Catholic. For but a little while we follow the shadows about this single globe, one speck in the Universe, and shall we afford to spend our time in fighting over any mere dogma, no matter by whom propounded? These things lie deeper than any creed, the love of truth as we experience it, the desire to help each other, the happiness of clear thought. Under all is the unseen Power whom we represent as having all truth, love and intelligence. To bring about the future reign of reason we have to abjure the flattery of the present generation, in the hope that our efforts will assist to the coming consummation, and in the knowledge that we are part in the machinery of evolution which must work through greater good toward perfection.

There seems to be no accredited method of expressing the best views in art, science, and letters in America, no criterion to guide the formation of a proper public opinion. All this leads to intellectual separatism, to the forming of churches, cliques, clubs, and societies without any way of arriving at a test and comparison of their results. An appeal is made, from time to time, to the public, but the public seems to support a split on general principles and has a savage taste for personalities irrespective of the merits of the question. The surrender of ourselves wholesale to the occupation of money-getting leads to this result and the elementary education we obtain in the public schools is not enough to correct the evil. What is at this time seriously demanded is higher schools, so that the people may be liberalized. Our political constitution favors heterodoxy in religion, and it is becoming a matter of individual churches and ministers. To all this one need not object, only the new schisms do not seem to have Christ, or a truly religious principle, or reason as their basis, so much as certain peculiar views