d incidentally of its once atrocious
tendency to persecute. For failure most unquestionably there has been:
tragic but not irretrievable, if men have the courage to face the
facts. Let it be acknowledged! Let an end come swiftly to the
invention of sophistries to prove the contrary. That way lies failure
deeper still.

The Christian Religion, in the course of its long history, has become
entangled with a multitude of things which do not properly belong to
it, with philosophies, with dogmatic systems, with political ideas,
with the vested interests of great institutions; and especially with
the habits of mind which have grown up with these things, this last,
the entanglement with deeply entrenched habits of mind, being the most
formidable of them all. These entanglements are another name for our
perplexities. They are so many and so deep that it becomes a matter of
difficulty to extract the original genius of Christianity, to recover
its original impulse and power.

It has become the fashion to rejoice in these entanglements. Men say
that Christianity, by becoming entangled with these foreign elements,
has permeated them with its spirit, acting upon them like leaven and so
transfiguring them with its own value. That view I cannot share: at
least not without great reservations. Were it not truer to say that
these foreign elements, these outside things, these worldly
philosophies and institutions, have rather permeated Christianity with
their spirit than suffered Christianity to permeate them with its own?
No one in his senses will deny that Christianity has done something to
make these worldly things better. They would all be much worse than
they are if Christianity had never touched them. But, on the other
hand, Christianity would be much better than it is if they had never
touched it. They have distorted it; have maimed it; have devitalized
it at essential points. Dean Inge is speaking the truth when he says
that Christianity has become secularized. It has become secularized
not only in its outward form, but in something far deeper, namely, in
its habits of thought, in its standard of values, and especially in its
strivings for power, this last being the characteristic vice of the
kingdoms that are of this world. Is it not a fact that for a long time
past the Churches of Christendom have been engaged in strife as to who
shall be greatest? There can be no surer sign of secularization than
that.

Chr