The break-up of a common ecclesiastical organization was not perhaps the most serious loss of unifying power which religion in the West suffered at the time of the Reformation.  If it be true that the Bible and the Greek spirit are the great common factors of Western civilization, then we must recognize that these two great influences tended to fall apart and even to oppose each other in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  The humanist element in the Reform-movement grew less and less, while humanism itself became more definitely secular.  The European mind has ever since been conscious of a disturbing division between religion and culture.  A development of religion which should render to Western civilization services comparable to those rendered by the mediaeval Church demands not only a heightened international consciousness among Christians, which shall be able to find organized expression, but also some fresh synthesis of religion and culture, some reunion of the spirit of Hellas, the Greek delight in beauty and faith in reason, with the moral strength and religious insight of Hebrew prophecy.

Those who are concerned for the future of our civilization will look eagerly for signs of any such development in the religious life and thought of our time.  Do recent history and present experience discover any influences at work which may yet restore a unifying power to religion?  Naturally any answer to such a question will be of a subjective character.  The personal equation cannot easily be eliminated; we may be duped by our hopes or deceived by our fears.  In the last analysis we cannot safely predict the future of religion.  We may, however, take stock of our present situation, and survey its significant elements, even if our value-judgements as to their relative importance will inevitably vary.

While religious divisions have not vanished from the West, and indeed show no prospect of immediate reconciliation, and while the formation of new sects, of which the Christian Science Movement offers an example, has not altogether ceased, there has been an admitted decline of the dogmatic and sectarian tempers, and this decline has opened the way for knitting up severed friendships.  The revolt against the dogmatic attitude of mind and even against religious dogma itself is widespread.  The sense of loss involved in the isolation of any sect, and the wish to pass beyond the limits of any denominational tradition, are both appreciably affecting the religious situation.  In England Matthew Arnold’s somewhat unhappy criticism of Dissent expressed a dislike both of dogma and sectarian narrowness.  His profounder contribution to the better understanding of St. Paul derives its worth precisely from his elevation of the mystic and the saint in Paul at the expense of the doctrinal theologian of Calvinist tradition.  The wish to be rid of dogma continues to find vigorous intellectual expression, of which Mr. Lowes Dickinson’s Religion, a Criticism and a Forecast, may be taken as an example.  In another direction the Brotherhood Movement and the Adult School Movement represent the search, if not for an altogether undogmatic faith, yet at least for a broader basis of association than is compatible with the insistence on definite statements of belief.  Both would unite in the prayer