Again, there is in practically all religions a large element of symbolism--the religious life expressing itself in worship--in rites and ceremony. And this carries with it a dangerous tendency in evaluation. It often substitutes ritual and ceremonial for what is the real essence of religion--namely, righteousness. The great Hebrew prophets contended strongly against this misinterpretation of religion. With them it represented an erroneous estimate of the essentials of religion. Indeed, it threatened its very life--the heart of which in their conception is righteousness in God and man. Isaiah represents Jehovah as being weary of sacrifice, incense and other forms of worship--regarding them as an abomination, and calling upon the people to live a life of righteousness: "Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed."[7] Hosea exclaims: "I desired mercy, and not sacrifice."[8] Micah, inveighing against burnt offerings, says: "He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good, and what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"[9] And Jesus, all through the Sermon on the Mount and in the parables, in the most positive manner represents righteous living as the very core of religion. All of these elements--the intellectual, the pietistic, the æsthetic or symbolical--have a rightful place in the religious life, but they are all subordinate, and exceedingly subordinate, to the one great dominating element, the moral. And it is because of a failure to adequately recognize and practise this element that so many supposedly Christian nations are today in deadly conflict. All of them persist in their theological beliefs; all of them persist in pietistic communion; all of them persist in rite and ceremony; but some of them at least fail even to approximate the exemplification of the fundamental ethical requirements of their faith. Their theology, their pietism, their worship,--their religion,--have not been moralized; and unless we are willing to make, both in belief and practice, the religious basis of world-organization truly ethical, we will fail as lamentably in the future as we have in the past.