The reformation was an effect as much as a cause. The nations were coming to their own in the midst of a more complex social life full of human interests and values. The Confessional Churches which sprang up were unable to establish themselves securely enough to dominate the civil powers. The consequence was, that secular civilization was released from the sway of religion and its supernaturalism. Government, science, art, industry, and literature flourished in a freedom they had seldom before experienced. The disorganization of religious institutions enabled many tendencies, hitherto kept in the background of men's consciousness, to push to the front and reveal their power over the human soul. Do we not know that many great mediaeval doctors had to fight against their love of literature and art? Protestantism may be said to have been an unintentional cause of the modern world. Protestantism broke up into an array of sects and tendencies as it fell upon the prism of human temperament. Radical sects appeared, like the Independents, the Quakers, the Baptists, the Pietists, and the Congregationalists. These were radical in a social way rather than in an intellectual way. They were subjective variations of the inherited motives. Largely, they represented a revolt against authoritism, and {206} emphasized the inner light or a very mild appeal to reason. Yet we must call them sects, just because they had much the same spirit and assumptions, and exaggerated what must be regarded as slight differences. Still their very number gave a milder direction to religion and made the idea of toleration more natural. There was safety in numbers. On the intellectual side, the Unitarian movement deserves attention for its aid in the dethronement of the old dogmatic structure. Alongside of these more subjective and emotional offshoots of Protestantism arose philosophical idealism to add a touch of vague pantheism and a flavor of kindly mysticism. In short, the confessional type of Protestantism mellowed under the influence of a more rational social organization with its gentler life. Reason was gaining in concreteness and power, and human values were gaining in attractiveness. The Old Testament gradually gave way to the synoptic gospels of the New, while asceticism dropped away like a mantle. I, myself, well remember when religion was largely a matter of taboos on the moral side. "Thou shalt not" outbalanced by far the suggestion of concrete lines of positive endeavor. Such spiritualism was passive and suspicious rather than active and creative. During the last thirty years, Protestantism has passed insensibly into a gentle religion of the spirit, sentimentally inclined toward life and permeated with popular notions of science and philosophy. The sermon of the Puritan concerned itself with the two dispensations; the sermon of the modern minister is full of quotations from the poets and reveals the growing influence of the social sciences.