Only by self-stultification can an Ethical Society refrain from combating so injurious a teaching with all the earnestness and courage at their command. Nothing would please the priests and rabbis more than to be assured that the efforts of the new teachers will be confined strictly to giving moral exhortations, and that they will leave church and dogma respectfully alone. CHAPTER V. Anchored at Last After nearly ten years of service in the Ethical field, I felt constrained to withdraw from the fraternity of lecturers, because I realized that under the guise of a new name we were all slowly slipping back into the net of theology, from which we had escaped after years of struggle and suffering. When I look over my own lectures delivered during my connection with the Ethical Movement, I find in them clearly the traces of the same reactionary bias. The atmosphere of theology is perceptible on nearly every page, Passages about the moral supremacy of Jesus, His uniqueness, and the indebtedness of the ages to Him, will be found in the publications which will not only show that I had swerved from the path into which I had entered when I left Calvinism, and in which I had persevered against numerous temptations to leave it, but also, what a powerful influence my new environment exerted upon me. In a lecture delivered before the Chicago Ethical Society, I try to prove the spiritual resurrection of Jesus, and His incomparable greatness. In another, delivered before the New York Society, in Carnegie Music Hall, I fail to appreciate the services of such intellectual Titans as Voltaire and Thomas Paine--who flung themselves against a thousand abuses, and by opposing, succeeded in putting an end to them. I make these confessions to show that there was in my course from Calvinism to Rationalism, a break, after all. I missed the straight path, despite all my vigilance, and cannot, therefore, claim the happiness, nor the distinction which belongs to those who have been more consistent than I have been.