Produced by Al Haines The Religious Situation BY GOLDWIN SMITH TORONTO WM. TYRRELL & COMPANY 1908 COPYRIGHT, 1908 BY THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW PUBLISHING COMPANY COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1908 BY GOLDWIN SMITH [Transcriber's note: This book was originally part of Smith's "No Refuge but in Truth." It was split into a separate e-book because it had its own title and verso page.] THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION. (From the _North American Review_.) "I express myself," says Bishop Butler, "with caution, lest I should be mistaken to vilify reason, which is, indeed, the only faculty which we have to judge concerning anything, even revelation itself; or be misunderstood to assert that a supposed revelation cannot be proved false from internal characters." "The faculty of reason," he says, "is the candle of the Lord within us against vilifying which we must be very cautious." What would the world be without religion? That is the dread question which seems now to be everywhere presenting itself. Would even the social fabric remain unshaken? Has not its stability partly depended on the general belief that the dispensation, with all its inequalities, was the ordinance of the Creator, and that for inequalities here there would be compensation hereafter? The belief may not in common minds have been very present; but it would seem to have had its influence. Apparently, it is now departing. In some places it seems to have fled. Scepticism, with social unrest, comes in its room. What is now the position of the clergy? Keepers and ministers of truth, as they are understood to be, they alone are debarred by ordination vows and tests from the free quest of truth. They are ecclesiastically bound not only to hold, but to teach and preach, as divinely revealed, what many of them must feel to have been disproved or to have become doubtful. Their uneasiness is shown by writings, such as "Lux Mundi," struggling to reconcile orthodoxy with free thought. It is shown by a growing tendency on the part of pastors to slide from the office of spiritual guide into that of leader of philanthropic effort and social reform. It is seen, perhaps, even in the tendency to give increased prominence to musical attraction in the service. Sermons grow more secular.