“I hope that the religion of the future will devote itself wholly to the Service of Man. It can do so without departing from the Christian ideal and Christian ethics. It need only drop all that is silly and disputable, and ‘mattering not neither here nor there,’ of Christian theology--a theology virtually absent from the direct teaching of Christ--and all of Judaistic literature or prescriptions not made immortal in their application by unassailable truth and by the confirmation of science. An excellent remedy for the nonsense which still clings about religion may be found in two books: Cotter Monson’s ‘Service of Man,’ which was published as long ago as 1887, and has since been re-issued by the Rationalist Press Association in its well-known sixpenny series, and J. Allanson Picton’s ‘Man and the Bible.’ Similarly, those who wish to acquire a sane view of the relations between man and God would do well to read Winwood Reade’s ‘Martyrdom of Man.’” Sir Harry in fact clears the ground for God very ably, and then makes a well-meaning gesture in the vacant space. There is no help nor strength in his gesture unless God is there. Without God, the “Service of Man” is no better than a hobby or a sentimentality or an hypocrisy in the undisciplined prison of the mortal life. CHAPTER THE FIFTH THE INVISIBLE KING 1. MODERN RELIGION A POLITICAL RELIGION The conception of a young and energetic God, an Invisible Prince growing in strength and wisdom, who calls men and women to his service and who gives salvation from self and mortality only through self-abandonment to his service, necessarily involves a demand for a complete revision and fresh orientation of the life of the convert. God faces the blackness of the Unknown and the blind joys and confusions and cruelties of Life, as one who leads mankind through a dark jungle to a great conquest. He brings mankind not rest but a sword. It is plain that he can admit no divided control of the world he claims. He concedes nothing to Caesar. In our philosophy there are no human things that are God’s and others that are Caesar’s. Those of the new thought cannot render unto God the things that are God’s, and to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. Whatever claim Caesar may make to rule men’s lives and direct their destinies outside the will of God, is a usurpation. No king nor Caesar has any right to tax or to service or to tolerance, except he claim as one who holds for and under God. And he must make good his claim. The steps of the altar of the God of Youth are no safe place for the sacrilegious figure of a king. Who claims “divine right” plays with the lightning.