The force of its faith operates not only to preserve moral vigor but to sensitize moral judgments. The God of religious devotion is not only revealed in the moral values of the universe outside of man, but he is revealed in the aspirations of man which are beyond his achievements. God insures not only the preservation of values but their perfection. All moral achievement is qualified by the relativities of time and circumstance. The worship of a holy God saves the soul from taking premature satisfaction in its partial achievement. It subjects every moral value to comparison with a more perfect moral ideal. Of course the absolute perfection of God is itself conditioned by the imperfect human insight which conceives it. A cruel age may picture God more cruel than itself, and to a generation lusting for power God may be the supreme tyrant. Thus religion may become the sanctification of human imperfections. Yet in its highest form religion does inculcate a wholesome spirit of humility which gives the soul no peace in any virtue while higher virtue is attainable. The force of religion in moral action and the necessity of religious assurance for the highest type of social life may be gauged by an analysis of possible alternatives to a social life which is oriented by a religious world view. There are two real alternatives to such a life. The one is based upon an ethical but unreligious world view, and the other scorns both ethics and religion in its absolute determinism. An ethical life which claims no support from religion may on occasion develop a very high type of social idealism, particularly since it escapes the ethical defects of religion even while it sacrifices religious resources. Stoicism is in many respects superior to pantheistic religions; for there are moral advantages in underestimating rather than overestimating the virtue of the universe. It is better to create a sense of tension between the conscience of man and a morally indifferent nature than to obscure the moral defects of nature by a deification of the natural order. But if men disavow all faith in a power not their own which makes for righteousness, they cannot finally save themselves from either arrogance or despair. Religion may destroy man’s self-reliance by an undue sense of humility, but even that limitation is no more destructive of moral values than a self-reliance which prompts the human spirit to strut for a while on this narrow world in the consciousness of unique virtue before capitulating to a world which is too blind to know what it has destroyed. Thomas Huxley thought he would as soon worship “a wilderness of monkeys” as to give himself to the worship of humanity after the fashion of Comte. To insist too strenuously upon the uniqueness of human life in the cosmic order must inevitably issue in the pride which such a worship implies. Since the Renaissance there has been a marked decay of the spirit of humility in Western civilization which