For him, all the evils of the time could ultimately be traced back to their common source in what may be briefly described as its want of real religion.

Of churches and creeds there were plenty; of living faith little or nothing was left.

Men had lost all vital sense of God in the world; and because of this, they had taken up a fatally wrong attitude to life.

They looked at it wholly from the mechanical point of view, and judged it by merely utilitarian standards.

The "body-politic" was no longer inspired by any "soul-politic." Men, individually and in the mass, cared only for material prosperity, sought only outward success, made the pursuit of happiness the end and aim of their being.