Unable to prevent these encroachments, they stubbornly resent them. Once admitted, it seems to them that nothing sacred or worthy the name of Religion would remain. To shift to other and more ancient faiths can never be considered at all, for the "higher criticism" and "pragmatism" have left them all in even a worse plight. It seems to these devout souls like the death of religion itself, and its elimination from the life of man. The intuitive basis and the intrinsic necessity of religion in some form have already been considered. This point is often overlooked or ignored by the Iconoclasts. Their position would seem to be, "Unravel the superstition, disprove the possibility of miracle, and let the deluge come if it must." Neither pragmatism nor higher criticism has been in any large sense constructive, but more largely destructive. The really spiritual element in all religions, already referred to, is generally lost sight of. Modern psychology is no nearer a science of the soul, than are folklore and superstition to true religion. It should be recognized and granted once for all that psychology, as a department of modern physical science, has no substitute whatever to offer in the place of Religion. It is gathering facts, classifying, and labeling psychic phenomena. Here and there an advanced scientist, like Sir Oliver Lodge, ignores tradition, repudiates orthodox scientific restraints, and steps over the border of actual or implied nihilism. This smug nihilism with its superior air of scientific wisdom, is often only the opposite pole of the dogmatic certitude of the churchman. Actual knowledge of the human soul is quite as far removed from the one as from the other. Credulity and Incredulity simply annul each other; often make faces at each other; while Progress stalks alone in the middle of the road, a "tramp" or a "vagabond," like Paracelsus, "reading the leaves of the book of Nature," laughing at poverty, fleeing from persecution, yet _knowing_, and "becoming a light to man forever." The consensus of opinion among the presidents and professors in the leading colleges and universities of this country, their unhesitating and unqualified denial or repudiation of the claims set up by the church regarding revelation and the basic dogmas of the Christian Religion, and which his "Holiness" of the Vatican designates as "Modernism," reveal, not only the "signs of the times," but show indisputably that modern education has shaken itself free from the superstitions of the past, and repudiated the old restraints to free thought and modern progress. Orthodoxy in religious matters has often nothing to do in determining college curriculums, in the selection of presidents, or in filling the chairs.