The temper of Western civilization has made the modern church quite ashamed of the other-worldly character of traditional religion, and intent upon discarding it as much as possible. Everything is done to impress the generation with the mundane interests of religious idealism and to secularize religion itself so that it may survive in a secular age as a kind of harmless adornment of the moral life. Yet its service to both human happiness and virtue are involved in its other-worldliness. It is through that element that it gains the power to raise morality above the utilitarian plane and to give human happiness a firmer foundation than fickle fortune. If men can find no basis for happiness except in their adjustment to external realities, they will not suffer pain to realize a kingdom of righteousness. If they are taught to identify physical well-being with their cherished peace, they will not venture farther than such actions as a cool prudence prompts. The cross was inspired by devotion to a “kingdom which is not of this world”; but the cross was also the method by which that kingdom was changed from an ethereal to a concrete reality. It is the absolute ideal which has no basis in concrete reality which moves men to defy the limitations of the concrete and overcome them. A religion which is perfectly at home in the world has no counsel for it which the world could not gain by an easier method. Yet the reaction of modern religion to traditional other-worldliness is natural enough and, in a way, necessary. While religion cannot afford to discard its other-worldliness, the moral and social limitations which issue from it are obvious enough. We have previously observed the tendency of types of religion to withdraw the ideal from life and to imagine that it has magic potencies over life’s realities, or that subjective devotion to it may absolve them of the duty of realizing it in history. All these defects are due to vagaries which are not inevitable characteristics of religious life. But the social limitations which result from the religious strategy of transcending the fortunes of life are constitutional and central. They therefore offer a very serious problem. If the soul is lifted above circumstances, it easily loses interest in changing them to better advantage. If its happiness is made independent of fortune, there is less purpose in making fortune secure. If personality discovers its highest satisfactions in defying environmental factors, it may become indifferent to the necessary projects of creating a more favorable environment for personal values. Human personality is an historic product, determined by specific forces of natural and social environment, and though it may attain its highest glory by transcending all circumstances, it will fall short if it adopts that strategy at the beginning and not at the end of its efforts. The Orient, which produces more saints than the Occident, pays for them by the abject misery of its multitudes.