for man, and that even God is just such a God as man
would have wished him to be, the existent ideal of human nature and
the foregone solution to all human problems. Nevertheless, Christian
dogmas are definite,[2] while human inspirations are potentially
limitless; and if the object of the two is identical either the dogmas
must be stretched and ultimately abandoned, or inspiration which does
not conform to them must be denounced as illusory or diabolical.

[Footnote 2: At least in their devotional and moral import. I suggest
this qualification in deference to M. Le Roy's interesting theory of
dogma, viz., that the verbal or intellectual definition of a dogma may
be changed without changing the dogma itself (as a sentence might be
translated into a new language without altering the meaning) provided
the suggested conduct and feeling in the presence of the mystery
remained the same. Thus the definition of transubstantiation might be
modified to suit an idealistic philosophy, but the new definition
would be no less orthodox than the old if it did not discourage the
worship of the consecrated elements or the sense of mystical union
with Christ in the sacrament.]

At this point the modernist first chooses the path which must lead him
away, steadily and for ever, from the church which he did not think to
desert. He chooses a personal, psychological, variable standard of
inspiration; he becomes, in principle, a Protestant. Why does he not
become one in name also? Because, as one of the most distinguished
modernists has said, the age of partial heresy is past. It is suicidal
to make one part of an organic system the instrument for attacking
another part; and it is also comic. What you appeal to and stand
firmly rooted in is no more credible, no more authoritative, than what
you challenge in its name. In vain will you pit the church against the
pope; at once you will have to pit the Bible against the church, and
then the New Testament against the Old, or the genuine Jesus against
the New Testament, or God revealed in nature against God revealed in
the Bible, or God revealed in your own conscience or transcendental
self against God revealed in nature; and you will be lucky if your
conscience and transcendental self can long hold their own against the
flux of immediate experience. Religion, the modernists feel, must be
taken broadly and sympathetically, as a great human historical symbol
for the truth. At least in Christianity