The breach which Gibbon remarked has been indefinitely widened since his time. What has brought this about, and what new moment in religious thought seems about to supply its place, will form an appropriate close to the present series of studies. In its examination, I shall speak only of Christian thought, since it leads the way which other systems will ultimately follow. In depicting the influences which have led and are daily leading with augmented force to the devitalizing of the doctrine of immortality, I may with propriety confine myself to those which are themselves strictly religious. For the change I refer to is not one brought about by the opponents of religion, by materialistic doctrines, but is owing to the development of the religious sentiment itself. Instead of tending to an abrogation of that sentiment, it may be expected to ennoble its emotional manifestations and elevate its intellectual conceptions. Some of these influences are historical, as the repeated disappointments in the second coming of Christ, and the interest of proselytizing churches to interpret this event allegorically. Those which I deem of more importance, however, are such as are efficient to-day, and probably will continue to be the main agents in the immediate future of religious development. They are: (1.) The recognition of the grounds of ethics. (2.) The recognition of the cosmical relations. (3.) The clearer defining of life. (4.) The growing immateriality of religious thought. (1.) The authority of the Law was assumed in the course of time by most Christian churches, and the interests of morality and religion were claimed to be identical. The Roman church with its developed casuistry is ready to prescribe the proper course of conduct in every emergency; and if we turn to many theological writers of other churches, Dick’s _Philosophy of Religion_ for instance, we find moral conduct regarded as the important aim of the Christian life. Morality without religion, works without faith, are pronounced to be of no avail in a religious, and of very questionable value in a social sense. Some go so far as to deny that a person indifferent to the prevailing tenets of religion can lead a pure and moral life. Do away with the belief in a hereafter of rewards and punishments, say these, and there is nothing left to restrain men from the worst excesses, or at least from private sin.