What everyone should take as a fair demand is that all men should be sincere in their professions, and that we should justify ourselves by the consistency of our own lives rather than by the wickedness of our neighbours:  which is nothing new.  It is our trouble that we must emphasise obvious duties.  To approach the question frankly with no matter what good faith will lead to much heart-burning, perhaps, to no little bitterness; but if we realise that all sides are about equally to blame, we may induce an earnestness that may lead to better things.  It is in that hope I write.  Catholics and Protestants, instead of saying to one another the things with which we are familiar, should look to their own houses; and if in this age of fashionable agnosticism, they should conclude that the general enemy is the atheist, socialist, and the syndicalist, they should still be reminded to look to their own houses; and if the agnostic take this to justify himself, he should be reminded he has never done anything to justify himself.  It may seem a curious way for inducing harmony to set out to prove everyone in the wrong; but the point is clear, not to attack what men believe but to ask them to justify their words by their deeds.  The request is not unreasonable and it may be asked in a tone that will show the sincerity of him who makes it and waken a kindred feeling in all earnest men.  The world will be a better place to live in, and we shall be all better friends when every man makes a genuine resolve to give us all the example of a better life.

III

A development that would require a treatise in itself I will but touch on, to suggest to all interested a matter of general and grave concern—­the growing materialism of religious bodies.  On all sides self-constituted defenders of the faith are troubling themselves, not with the faith but with the numbers of their adherents who have jobs, equal sharers in emoluments, and so forth.  A Protestant of standing writes a book and proves his religion is one of efficiency; a Catholic of equal standing quickly rejoins with another book to prove his religion is also efficient; each blind to the fact that the resulting campaign is disgraceful to both.  When religion ceases to represent to us something spiritual, and purely spiritual, we begin to drift away from it.  “Where thy treasure is, there thy heart is also.”  “No man can serve God and Mammon.”  The modern rejoinder is familiar:  “We must live.”  This, our generation is not likely to forget.  The grave concern is that well-meaning men are accustoming themselves to this cry to sacrifice all higher considerations for the “equal division of emoluments.”  Let us as citizens and a community see that every man has the right and the means to live; but when self-interested bodies start a rivalry in the name of their particular creeds, we know it ends in a squalid greed and fight for place, in a pursuit of luxury, the logical outcome of which must be to make the world ugly, sordid and brutal.  It would be a mistake to overlook that high-minded men are allowing themselves to be committed by plausible reasons to this growing evil.  It is misguided enthusiasm.  There is a divine authority that warns us all:  “Be zealous for the better gifts.”