“Each age must worship its own thought of God, More or less earthy, clarifying still With subsidence continuous of the dregs.”[164] Crude men must have crude symbols—even “rod or candy for child-minded men”[165]—but these should be educational, leading up from lower forms of thought to higher. A system that keeps men in sensualism when they are capable of rising above it, or in dogmatism when they are ready to think, is as bad as one that does not reach their minds at all. At the present time all finality in religious formulas is discredited philosophically by the idea of evolution and of the consequent relativity of all higher truth, while, practically, free discussion has so accustomed people to conflicting views that the exclusive and intolerant advocacy of dogma is scarcely possible to the intelligent. It is true, of course, that philosophical breadth and free discussion have flourished before, only to be swept under by the forces making for authority; but they were never so rooted in general conditions—of communication and personal freedom—as they are now. It seems fairly certain that the formulas of religion will henceforward be held with at least a subconsciousness of their provisional character. The creeds of the future are likely, also, to be simple. In all institutions there is nowadays a tendency to exchange formulas for principles, as being more flexible and so more enduring. The nearer you can get to universal human nature without abandoning concreteness the better. There is coming to be a clearer distinction of functions between metaphysics and worship, which may enable each to be enjoyed to the utmost without being unnecessarily mixed with the other. The less intellectual a religious symbol is the better, because it less confines the mind. Personality is the best symbol of all; and after that music, art, poetry, festivity and ceremony are more enduring and less perilous symbols than formulas of belief. Sentiments change like ideas, but not so much and not so evidently; and the essential exercises of religion for the mass of men are those which awaken higher sentiment, especially those good works, in which, chiefly, the founder of Christianity and his real followers have expressed their religious impulse. These also are symbols, and the most potent and least illusive of all. It is indeed a general truth that sentiment is nearer to the core of life than definable thought. As the rim of a wheel whirls about its centre, so ideas and institutions whirl about the pivotal sentiments of human nature. To define a thing is to institutionize it, to draw it forth from the pregnant obscurity of the soul and show just how it appears in the transient color of our particular way of thinking. Definitions are, in their nature, short-lived.