THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE.
SCIENCE, some believe and say, advances steadily and surely toward that time when knowledge shall take the place of faith, certainty shall supplant doubt, and a clear sight shall dispel the illusions of enthusiasm. Science must then stand for religion, or religion must absorb science.
It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss this most subtle and profound question, nor to attempt to show, either that science and religion are one and the same, or that each of them has its separate and distinct domain. I may, however, permit myself to say, that I am loth to accept the doctrine that science must destroy religion, inasmuch as science can never comprehend the infinite, can never bring God down to the finite understanding of man. There has never been uttered a truer or a more subtle mystery, than this: "God is spirit and must be worshipped in spirit:" and the worst enemies of true religion have been they who have attempted, with their finite words, to express and define the infinite and indefinable.
"God is spirit and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth."
So long as this remains true, so long will man be a religious being, and so long will he need and demand religious thought and action.
We come now to a vital question. What is the religion of the future here in America to be?
Already we number some thirty-five millions of souls; it is computed that in forty years from this we shall number one hundred millions, and in seventy years from to-day our population will have swelled to the mighty mass of two hundred and fifty millions of human beings. It is startling to think that the child born to-day will live to see between the shores of the Atlantic and Pacific a greater population than that which now crowds the Continent of Europe. And we may well shrink from the thought that this struggling mass may be without any religion. We may well ask, what is to be the religious belief and action of this coming time? may well wonder what one or more of the religious beliefs of our day, which have found expression in organized churches, will dare to attempt, and will be potent to leaven with a vital faith the action of this coming crowd.
If the life of man in this world is ever to be, and only to be, to add house to house, and lay field to field till there be no place left—if life for these coming millions is to be simply a frank and limitless materialism; if the using of this world for the benefit of one's fellows and the glory of the spirit is a foolish delusion, then these coming millions will need no religion, and will have none. But if the contrary, as I would fain hope, then a religion they must and will have. What will it be? Will it be some new, vital, powerful thought or principle, organized into a Church, or will it be one of those structures already existing, enlarged and adapted to the coming time?
Two such churches, or organizations, command attention; because of their
