It is the virtue of a vital religious idealism that it lifts life above the level of nature and makes the development of an ethical personality the ultimate goal of human existence. Without the vivid and realistic other-worldly hopes and fears with which the medieval church disciplined life and which the modern church cannot restore, it may seem that religion possesses no force which could counteract the primitive impulses which move men and nations. But these hopes and fears were merely crude ways of expressing the idea that life is fundamentally moral and that its destiny transcends the animal conflict. Life will continue to develop in the direction of the ideal implicit in it and every organism is impelled to move toward the goal of its own completeness. The ideal implicit in human character is that of ethical freedom; and awakened personalities will seek to realize that ideal. They will seek to realize it even at the expense of physical sacrifices and pain. They will learn how to find life by losing it. It is the quest for what is not real but is always becoming real, for what is not true but is always becoming true, that makes man incurably religious. Modern religion is therefore not without resource in contending against the forces of nature. The great difficulty is that the struggle for ethical integrity is so painful that most men are tempted to seek some short-cut to it; and organized religion generally expresses the hopes and desires of this easygoing multitude. In the medieval church magic provided the short-cut. In the modern church it is provided by a sanctified prudence which teaches men how to be unselfish and selfish at the same time, how to gain moral self-respect without sacrificing too many temporal advantages. The hope of a revival of ethical religion and of an ethical reconstruction of society therefore depends, as it did in the past, upon a renunciation of the religious short-cuts which lead to hypocrisy.