We can never have a new set of principles of truth, but we can have new
discoveries of old ones and new attitudes toward them. We can never
change the constitution of life and nature, but we can learn more about
it and better adapt ourselves to it. We cannot alter the divine plan of
life and redemption, but we can make progress in our understanding and
use of it. Not to do so would be an inexpressible pity. We do not have a
new religion, but we do have newer and more adequate conceptions of the
old faith.
The older type of religious thinking was largely derived from the
speculations of the cloister. That of the present is taken directly from
the facts of life. The Bible was the basis of the old, and is the basis
of the new; but in the one case it was viewed from the quiet shadows of
the cell, while in the other it is seen from the viewpoint of the dusty
road, the busy market place, and the domestic hearthstone.
In so far as the older religious thinking did take its conclusions from
life, it tended to place the stamp of divinity only on the unusual phases
and outstanding experiences. It saw God in the violence of the thunder and
lightning, but it did not always sense him in the gentle sunshine of the
ordinary day. It recognized him in the ecstasy of the mountaintop, but it
did not always find him in the duty of the valley. It connected him with
the exceptional moments, but not with quiet hours, prosaic tasks, and
drab days.
The older religious thinking tended to glorify every tense except the
present. It had its good old days on which it looked back with loving
tenderness, and its Golden Age, toward which it looked forward with
longing hope. The newer thinking recognizes the value of the past and the
importance of the future, but lays its supreme emphasis upon the present.
It glorifies only one tense, and that is the Golden Now.