It is one rather for gathering and testing.. But we know where the material is to be found. It is out of the facts of the common life, out of what the history and consciousness of man really contain, that the religious thought structure of the future will rise. But any view of life which is to be of value must include its highest levels. A singular philosophy has had its vogue among us which has sought to deal with everything human in terms of its origins. But the human problem can never be solved by a mere looking backward. An oak cannot be adequately studied in an acorn. The best proof of man's spiritual inheritance is that it exists. Its presence and work in man form an actuality which no criticism or inquiry into origins can really invalidate. These pages are written in the conviction that the common life, impartially and comprehensively studied, will yield to our children, as it did to our fathers, an irresistible argument for faith, hope and love. J. B. XIV.-The Ethics of Desire XV.-The Larger Reference. XIX.-The Feast of Faces XXV.-Of Pulpit Silences THE COMMON LIFE. Life's Positives. THERE are times when most of us are inclined to cry out against the positive. There seems too much of it. Our neighbour carries a whole cargo of opinions which he is anxious to unload upon us. Every street corner has its church or chapel which shouts its affirmation at us-a whole string of affirmations. We travel to the ends of the earth, only to find the same thing. The present writer remembers the sensation with which, on sailing up the Dardanelles, he caught sight for the first time of the Mohammedan minarets which proclaimed him a Giaour, an infidel. It was with a similar consciousness that, in standing at the tomb of the apostles in St. Peter's, he suddenly called to mind that the church he was in, like the Turkish mosque, disposed in the most uncompromising manner of his future. We are all damned at least half-a-dozen times by the faiths we do not accept. Pondering these things the feeling, we say, comes over us that the thing has been a little overdone, and we are disposed to ask whether humanity might not, to the general advantage, stay its lust of affirmation and give its infallibility a rest. In such moods we fall in love with the undefined, and are disposed to say with Chamfort, “Il faut agir davantage, penser moins, et ne pas se regarder vivre." Let us do more, think less, and not peer too closely into the business of living." 66 But is this really the conclusion of the matter? A nearer look into things shows us that, on the contrary, it is only a mood, an idea to be caressed a moment, and then put aside for what it is worth. While talk of this kind has a certain ground, it amounts neither to the condemnation of the positive, nor to the suggestion of a substitute for it. Granted that man has here pushed matters to excess, that his creeds are often a burden rather than a help, that his propositions are continually having to be revised or withdrawn; this does not prevent us from realising, on a deeper view, that in following this line he has, after all, not been mistaken, that his positive is really founded upon the general scheme of things. Man makes his proposition, for one thing, by |