Important, then, as the metaphysical problem of religion is, it is not the only problem which it faces. Though it is a real task to reinterpret religious truth in the light of modern science, it is by no means a hopeless one; and though it is necessary, it is not the only necessary task. In the light of modern philosophical inquiries it is justifiable to assume that the most needed hypotheses of religion are metaphysically defensible. In the present situation of religion in civilization, it is more necessary to inquire if and how the peculiar attitudes and the unique life which proceeds from a religious interpretation of the universe may be made to serve the needs of men in modern civilization. The fact is that more men in our modern era are irreligious because religion has failed to make civilization ethical than because it has failed to maintain its intellectual respectability. For every person who disavows religion because some ancient and unrevised dogma outrages his intelligence, several become irreligious because the social impotence of religion outrages their conscience. Religion never lacks moral fruits so long as it has any vitality. It has been placed in such a sorry plight in fulfilling its ethical task in modern civilization because the mechanization of society has made an ethical life for the individual at once more necessary and more difficult, and failure more obvious, than in any previous civilization. If we are not less ethical than our fathers, our happiness is certainly more dependent than that of our fathers upon the ethical character of our society. Rapid means of commerce and communication have brought us into terms of intimacy with all the world without increasing the spiritual dynamic and ethical intelligence which makes such close contact sufferable. We have multiplied the tools of destruction which a confused conscience may wield and have thus armed the world of nature which lives in the soul of man by the same science by which we imagined ourselves to have conquered nature. We have developed so complex a society that it cannot be made ethical by moral goodwill alone, if moral purpose is not astutely guided. Lacking social intelligence, modern civilization has thus robbed man of confidence in his own and his neighbor’s moral integrity even when ethical motives were not totally lacking. Civilization with its impersonal and mechanized relationships tends on the one hand to make society less ethical, and on the other to reveal its immoralities more vividly than in any previous age. Religion has a relation to both cause and effect to the moral life. Both its friends and its foes are inclined to judge it by its moral fruits, regarding it as primarily the root, fancied or real, of morality. Yet morality is as much the root as the fruit of religion; for religious sentiment develops out of moral experience and religious convictions are the logic by which moral life justifies itself.