From the Preface. THE FREE RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT toward World-religion and World-brotherhood gave birth to this book in the form of Addresses delivered in London. The original intention was to set forth the principles and aims of the Movement. But as the Movement is really a cosmic one, radiating from the facts of universal religion and brotherhood, it concerns itself with the peaceful reconstruction of society, and the rebuilding of the war-shattered world. Under many different names, the Free Religious Movement flourishes in every part of the civilised globe. It is the Modernist Movement in its most comprehensive and thorough-going form. It has its source in that desire for unity which pervades the modern world. It is a reasoned effort to express and encourage that sweep towards Universalism in religion and politics and social ethics which is the most powerful and hopeful impulse of our time. It takes the world for its parish, and mankind as its concern. It seeks to relate human beings to one another and to their universe by principles which are rational, scientific, ethical, and international. The Movement is essentially religious; but it is not a sect or a church; for it operates in all sects and churches, yet outside and independently of them all. It substitutes the humanist for the dogmatic, ethics for creeds, and the collective service of mankind for sacraments. It regards religion as spiritual enthusiasm directing itself towards reform of abuses, just social order, free economic conditions, and pacific international arrangements. All forms of religion spring from those universal desires for beauty, goodness and truth which reveal themselves in man's growing knowledge of his universe and his own aspiring moral nature, and which constitute the sure warrant for a society of World-brotherhood. The human soul is a unity, and the racial solidarity of man follows. Universalism is the final goal of human effort. The Movement bases itself on humanism rather than ecclesiasticism. Its root is deep in the spiritual oneness of humanity, and its growth is towards the flower and fruit of international unity. Its faith is in the divinity inherent in human nature; it expects to find goodness and truth in the immortal books of all ages and races; and it regards with reverence all those who in every nation and time have laboured and suffered and lived and died for humanity. In the belief that ample wisdom and virtue dwell within the nature of man himself, it moves forward to the accomplishment of the successive tasks of mankind in the strength of those truths which have been approved by experience, discovered by science, and tested by reason. The Movement is a movement towards freedom. The goal of human unity can be reached only in the degree in which men and women learn to think independently, fearlessly and rationally; in proportion as mind and conscience become liberated from servile submission to authority and tradition. It assumes the right of everyone to think and speak his or her own thoughts; and expects the greatest progress to follow from entire intellectual liberty and perfect freedom of judgment. The Free Religious Movement, finally, is an insistent and urgent force in human affairs. As becomes a worldwide consciousness and a world-embracing purpose, it takes the widest survey of those questions which agitate the minds and those interests which engage the activities of men and women in every land and among every people. Nothing that is human is alien to it. Acknowledging the common universal religion embedded within every one of the historic and dogmatic and mythical and sectarian forms of religion, yet recognising the same common universal religion in groups and combinations and movements beyond the bounds of all the organised faiths of the world....