The question which we really face, therefore, is whether religion is constitutionally but a sublimation of man’s will to live or whether it can really qualify the will of the individual and restrain his expansive desires for the sake of society. If it is only the former, it will continue to be the peculiar possession either of those who have no urgent social problems or of those who are the beneficiaries and not the victims of social maladjustments. If religion is not now functioning in the solution of social and ethical problems, its impotence in this field may be due to constitutional weaknesses which may be corrected, once they are understood, or it may be due to certain specific historical influences of the past centuries of Western life which further experience will change and qualify. If religion has resources for the solution of social and ethical problems which have not been made available for the uses of society, it is the duty of modern teachers of religion and of all who still have confidence in its social efficacy or who benefit by its comforts to work for the elimination of its social limitations, whether they seem to be incidental and casual or basic and constitutional. Even constitutional limitations in the social task need not discredit religion as a social force; for a valuable resource may be closely related to a social limitation and a way may be discovered to detach the one from the other. Men always tend to be either uncritical devotees or merciless critics of the various values which emerge in human life. This is particularly true in regard to the values of religion, the limitations of which are always aggravated by its unreflective champions and made the occasion of sweeping abuse by its critics. Religious people have assumed too easily that a religious life must issue not only in private rectitude but in perfect social attitudes. This overestimate of its social usefulness easily creates a reaction of criticism which denies that there is any useful counsel in religion for the problems of society or any dynamic necessary for their solution. CHAPTER III THE SOCIAL RESOURCES OF RELIGION