appreciated and their high type of moral idealism could not serve to qualify the less heroic morality of the law and the superficial moralizing of the Wisdom literature. Incidentally it may be observed that bibliolatry is one of the handicaps to moral progress in almost all religions. Through it primitive cultures and moral customs which happen to be enshrined in the canon become absolutely authoritative, and the weight of their influence is set against new ventures in moral life. If Calvinistic and puritan idealism departed from its assumed norm in its very conception, the moral realities which issued from it bore even less resemblance to the absolute idealism of the ethics of Jesus. Its unqualified confidence in the power of individual virtue to overcome the world and change society contributed to the relaxation of moral restraints upon social institutions and the secularization of society to which reference has been made. Its sanctification of secular tasks led inevitably to a sanctification of secular motives which it did not desire but could not prevent. Men were to serve God by diligence in their daily toil. But what was the end of industry which endowed it with virtue? The puritan answer was to regard work as an end in itself, an emphasis which it learned to make in its reaction to monastic and aristocratic idleness. But that answer alone could not suffice. Inevitably the material gains which were the rewards of industry were given a special religious sanction. “If God show you a way in which you may lawfully get more than in another way, without wrong to your soul or to any other, if you refuse this and choose the less gainful, you cross one of the ends of your Calling and refuse to be God’s steward,” said Governor Bradford.[8] The ancient and medieval world had been more or less scornful of the pursuit of wealth and abounded in characters among both the nobility and the peasantry who thought it beneath their dignity to increase their patrimony. The religious sanction of material gain was a new thing in history and undoubtedly helped to fashion the moral temper of modern society in which diligence is the great virtue and greed the besetting vice.[9] It is the puritan heritage of America which gives a clew to the paradox of our national life. It explains how we can be at the same time the most religious and the most materialistic of all modern nations.