Religion is scientifically verified if freedom and purpose are found to have a place in the cosmic processes, and it is ethically justified if it helps to create and maintain creative freedom and moral purpose in human life. The present moral impotence of Protestant Christianity is partially derived from the inadequacy of some of its traditions which it inherited out of periods of history which had different moral needs than our own day. Its individualism rendered a universal service at the dawn of the modern era but survives to-day chiefly as a sanctification of the peculiar interests and prejudices of one particular class in Western society. The limitations of its ethical traditions are easily obscured not only because all religion easily gives the semblance of finality to the relativities of history, but because a religion which imagines itself devoted to the spirit of Jesus is under the temptation of exploiting the prestige of his absolute ethics without approximating his ethical position. The moral effectiveness of religion depends upon its ability to detach itself from the historical relativities with which its ideals are inevitably compounded in the course of history. The avowed loyalty of the Christian church to the spirit of Christ may become the basis of such a detachment, since there is little in the gospel of Jesus which conforms to the dominant interests of modern life. But the very reverence in which Jesus is held may operate to obscure the essential genius of his life. Religion is therefore under the necessity of developing the critical faculty even while it maintains its naïvete and reverence. The necessity of coöperation between the naturally incompatible factors of reason and imagination, of intelligence and moral dynamic, is really the crux of the religious and moral problem in modern civilization. The complexity of modern life demands that moral purpose be astutely guided; but moral purpose itself is rooted in ultra-rational sanctions and may be destroyed by the same intelligence which is needed to direct it. Both humility and love, the highest religious virtues, are ultra-rational; yet they cannot be achieved in an intricate social life without a discriminating intelligence which knows how to uncover covert sins and to discover potential virtues. The incidental limitations which every historic type of religion reveals can be dealt with only if the religious devotee can be persuaded to regard the values of his religion critically; yet the cultivation of such a critical spirit may easily lead to the enervation of the religious spirit itself. If the highest values of religion are themselves conditioned rather than absolute, it must be possible to assign them a place in the hierarchy of values, without encouraging a complete loss of confidence in them. Such a task is difficult but not impossible. A robust moral idealism will help to create a spiritual fervor which will not be easily defeated by