There is in very deed, in a very true sense, although it may be a low sense comparatively, a religion of humanity; a creed and an act of faith; and that religion has for its creed these articles: man is pure; he is not a bundle of passions merely; man is responsible, he has to answer for his beliefs; man may yet be perfect. There is no article in this creed that can be justified to the sceptical intellect, and yet there is not a single article in it that the loving heart of man, and that his soul in his highest and best moments, does not cling to as the very life of its life. The heart of man believes in the perfectibility of humanity, in spite of sin and misery and oppression. The long litany of man’s [imperfections?] comes down with a wail of despairing denial of the possibility of perfection. Remedy after remedy has been tried, scheme after scheme has been invented, and have been borne away like the bubbles on the wave; but still the heart of man clings to the belief that there is a perfect goodness somewhere, even when civilisation fails to produce it, even in spite of what we have seen in the last three months when the most civilised nations of Europe have banded themselves together for mutual destruction; in spite of all this disproof of perfection, the heart of man clings to it still. We do have faith in humanity, and the value of the faith is that it elevates the soul which believes in it. This belief in the possibility of perfection, in the possibility of delivering men from sin and sorrow, this is not merely the dream of the poet, it is not merely the Utopia of the philosopher, but it is the instinctive might in the heart of the earnest worker, that gives strength to him who does his duty amid the haunts of sin and sorrow; it is this that sends the Christian worker into the back streets and lanes of our great cities; it is this that sends the Christian minister to the bedside of the dying; it is this that makes men toil and suffer for their fellow men, like him whom we worship, who saw in his dying hour of the travail of his soul and was satisfied.