Fear not to think of sacred things; nothing is sacred because it is mysterious; reverence does not dwell apart from reason. Faith does not reach its perfection in the fool; it shines most glorious where wisdom dwells. There still are the superstitious souls who confound darkness with divinity; who cry aloud against the light of knowledge. But they can no more stay the discovery of truth than the bats can hold back the dawn. NEW TRUTHS FOR NEW DAYS There are many who think they must live without religion because they cannot be content with the views held by their fathers. The facts on which the faith of the past was based have come into the light so that the modern man, examining them, finds himself in all honesty compelled to question them and often ultimately to call them fables. The attempt to answer the questions of the clear-eyed modern scientific mind by accusing it of inherent antagonism to religion is cheap and ineffectual. There are honest doubters who at the same time are earnest seekers after truth, who desire the best, who are willing to pay any price for personal character and social righteousness. It is because such men are honest that they refuse to be bound by creeds they cannot believe and to buttress beliefs they cannot indorse. No greater loss could come to character than to insist that we shall act and speak a lie in order that the body of religious teaching shall remain undisturbed. The heresy we most need to fear is that which blatantly declares one thing while at heart fearing that another is true. The old generation in religion is accusing the new of treason to faith and the new is accusing the old of blindness to truth. When the father says to the son, "Believe this or be lost," the son answers that he rather would be lost in company with truth and honesty of conscience than be saved at the cost of both. But do these divergencies mean that the man of the modern mind must give up religion and that those who hold to the traditional views can find no fellowship with those who see new light? This is more than an academic question; it presses on every man who, finding in him the universal thirst for religion, finds also standing before the living waters him who says, "You can drink only out of this cup handed down from the fathers; you can approach only on speaking our shibboleth." Our fathers looked on religious truth as something complete and unchangeable, once for all delivered to the saints. But they forgot how different was the truth, as they saw it, from its vision as given to their fathers. Every age tends to look upon itself as the final goal and on its views as the last possible statement of truth.