small as small, it is even more truly the end of Christian preaching.  What we are most in need of today is a corrected perspective of our faith; without it we darken counsel as we talk in confusion.  So, while we may not attempt here a detailed and reasoned statement of religious belief, we may try to say what is the fundamental attitude, both toward nature and toward man, that lies underneath the religious experience.  We have seen that we are not stating that attitude very clearly nowadays in our pulpits; hence we are often dealing there with sentimental or stereotyped or humane or even pagan interpretations.  Yet nothing is more fatal for us; if we peddle other men’s wares they will be very sure that we despise our own.

We approach, then, the third and final level of experience to which we referred in the first lecture.  We have seen that the humanist accepts the law of measure; he rests back upon the selected and certified experience of his race; from within himself, as the noblest inhabitant of the planet, and by the further critical observation of nature he proposes to interpret and guide his life.  He is convinced that this combined authority of reason and observation will lead to the summum bonum of the golden mean in which unbridled self-expression will be seen as equally unwise and indecent and ascetic repression as both unworthy and unnecessary.  It is important to again remind ourselves that confidence in the human spirit as the master of its own fate, and in reason and natural observation as offering it the means of this self-control and understanding, are essential humanistic principles.  The humanist world is rational, social, ethical.

Over against this reasonable and disciplined view of man and of his world stands naturalism.  It exploits the defects of the classic “virtue”; it is, so to speak, humanism run to seed.  Just as religion so often sinks into bigotry, cruelty and superstitition, so humanism, in lesser souls, declines to egotism, license and sentimentality.  Naturalism, either by a shallow and insincere use of the materialistic view of the universe, or by the exalting of wanton feeling and whimsical fancy as ends in themselves, attempts the identification of man with the natural order, permits him to conceive of each desire, instinct, impulse, as, being natural, thereby defensible and valuable.  Hence it permits him to disregard the imposed laws of civilization—­those fixed points of a humane order—­and to return in principle, and so far as he dares in action, to the unlimited and irresponsible individualism of the horde.  Inevitably the law of the jungle is deliberately exalted, or unconsciously adopted, over against the humanist law of moderation and discipline.