It may be taken for granted that an inquiring age like this will never submit itself to an intellectual position which presents itself merely on the ground of authority. The Reformation won the right to think, and in this we shall not be less than our fathers. Whatever we believe must be in harmony with our reason and our experience. This does not mean that those who exercise this right to think are become rationalists. We know ourselves everywhere to be surrounded by the evidences of a divine purpose: for us the things which are not seen are eternal. We find in the history of to-day--in the history of those past seven tangled and tragic years--clear manifestations of the hand of God. But we believe that in the interpretation of Jesus personal experience must always have a major part. Our faith must be something not merely personal to ourselves but of which we can give some sort of account to others. Christ spoke no more incisive word than this: "Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?" There can be no question as to the dire need there is of such an awakening by which men and women may once again be turned to spiritual things. War is, under all conditions, and even when waged for the purest of motives, an unmitigated evil. The saddest things in war are not the deaths in action. Abnormal conditions, which bring together millions of men in a cause in which the sense of personal responsibility is merged in the sacrifice for a general purpose, produce abnormal results. The old moorings are lifted. The old restraints, so largely the result of environment and of local opinion and knowledge, cease to operate. The sense of "mine" and "thine" is loosened. Continence ceases to be a primal virtue. The idle become yet more idle and the reckless yet more reckless. And if the results upon the men who have seen service have been thus evil, the effects on the stay-at-home community have been even more evil because less gross. Money has been made in great quantity by those who have no sense of the stewardship of wealth, and has been displayed with an aggressiveness that only embitters the way of simple and modest people. If the morals of men have deteriorated, women may well consider whether their fashions of dress have not contributed largely to the general demoralization. There were periods when lewdness advertised itself by its garb and indecency wore a uniform. It is not possible now to draw any large generalizations. The pungent definition of the modern novel as the kind of book that no nice girl would allow her mother to read may or may not be justified, but a glance through the pages of the cheap American story magazine will leave no one in uncertainty as to the kind of thing that is apparently most marketable. Any one to-day who takes a grave view of moral and religious conditions need not be afraid of being counted a misanthrope. Public life will always reflect not inaccurately private conditions.