ABSTRACT
Theology may be defined as dealing with man’s relations to the god or gods in whom he believes; morals, as dealing with his relations to his fellow-men. For primitive theology is primitive science; it is the outcome of man’s first efforts to explain the nature of his surroundings, and of the divers influences which affect him for good, and still more for ill. Theology is purified from gross conceptions only in proportion as it is purged of the false science with which, to its own hurt, it identified itself in the past, and to the remnants of which it still clings. Creeds may die, rites and ceremonies become matters of archeological interest, but human needs endure. Conduct is everything, because duty never lapses. Theology, uncorrected, troubles itself about the fate of a man who denies its speculative doctrines; morals bid him remember, as the one thing needful, that what he sows he or his will reap.
