From this point of view, the definition of religion given in the Old Testament should be revised, “Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before thy God.”  In doing justice we must first be just to self; in loving mercy it must not be at the expense of our own interests and advantage, and we must not walk so humbly before our God as to give to the world the appearance of weakness or lack of independence.  As Nietzsche insists, “The man who loves his neighbor as himself must have an exceedingly poor opinion of himself.”  If the race is to be perfected, everything and every person must be sacrificed in order to produce and preserve the strong man at all hazards.  There is a kind of “moralic acid,” as Nietzsche styles it, which is corroding the strength of humanity in our modern day.  We have discoursed too much of character, too little of power; too much of self-sacrifice and too little of self-assertion; too much of right, too little of might.  Conscience not only interferes with success, but also prevents the evolution of a superior type of man, that superman who is not constrained by duty nor limited by law, living his life “beyond good and evil.”

The serious question which presents itself to our minds at this time is whether our modern world has not been unconsciously incorporating these ideas into its living beliefs—­that is, those beliefs which reveal themselves in actual living and doing, in daily purpose, in the adaptation of means to ends, in the deeds which the world honors, and in the achievements which it crowns with glory.  There are many persons who would not have the frankness of Nietzsche to say that might makes right, and that a moral sense is the great obstacle to progress, and that in “vigorous eras noble civilizations see something contemptible in sympathy, in brotherly love, in the lack of self-assertion and self-reliance.”  Our modern world may not explicitly subscribe to such doctrines in their extreme and exaggerated expression, but nevertheless may be unconsciously influenced by them.  Our real opinions, however, are to be tested by our sense of values as revealed by the things which we crave, which we set our hearts upon, which we strive early and late to gain, and sacrifice all else in order to secure.  Have we not offered our prayers to the God of might rather than the God of righteousness, to the God of power rather than the God of justice, the God of mercy and of love?

The time has come, in my opinion, for us to take account of the things which we really believe, and of the God Whom we really worship.  If we have been following false gods, let us honestly endeavor to re-establish fundamental and essential values, to discover anew what is of supreme worth and set our faces resolutely toward its realization.  The need of our modern world today is the same as that of the ancient world at the time of the coming of Christ.  His message to the world as indicated by His teaching, and His life was an arraignment of the ancient regime as regards three crucial points.