Materialists, pantheists, positivists, secularists, and pessimists unite in denying that there is a God above and distinct from nature, while agnostics and cosmists affirm that such a being, if he exist, must necessarily lie outside the domain of knowledge. Positive religious doctrines, therefore, are superstition. As these views are reflected in a more or less vague way in the writings of the multitude of those who make the current literature, public opinion becomes averse to religious dogmas. A large number of cultivated minds turn from all definite systems, whether of thought or belief. Everything may be tolerated, if only the spirit of dogmatism is away. They recognize how great a thing religion is, how profoundly it touches life, how powerfully it shapes conduct. Without it, civilization is hard and mechanical, art is formal and feeble, and man himself but a shrewd animal. But, from their points of view, doctrines about God and Christ and the church have nothing to do with religion. To think of God as substance is to convert him into nature, to think of him as a person is to limit him. The only absolute is the moral order of the world. The religion of Christ is not a theory or a system of thought; it is a view of life, and its essence is found in belief in the reality of moral ideas. The supernatural may fall away,--even the notion of a Providence which rules the world in the interest of the good may be given up,--and we still have the method and the secret of Jesus, all that is of value in his life and teaching. All theology is an illusion, all creeds are a mistake. Religion rests upon the moral power, which is not a conclusion drawn from facts, but the fact itself,--the primal and essential fact in human life. Religion is simply morality suffused by the glow and warmth of a devout and reverent temper, and to teach doctrines about God and the church will not make men religious.