ciling the world unto
himself is for the Christian a finality, but, from the day the first
disciples saw its truth until now, the intellectual formulations in which
it has been set and the mental categories by which it has been
interpreted have changed with the changes of each age's thought.

While at first, then, a progressive Christianity may seem to plunge us
into unsettlement, the more one studies it the less he would wish it
otherwise. Who would accept a snapshot taken at any point on the road of
Christian development as the final and perfect form of Christianity?
Robert Louis Stevenson has drawn for us a picture of a man trying with
cords and pegs to stake out the shadow of an oak tree, expecting that
when he had marked its boundaries the shadow would stay within the limits
of the pegs. Yet all the while the mighty globe was turning around in
space. He could not keep a tree's shadow static on a moving earth.
Nevertheless, multitudes of people in their endeavour to build up an
infallibly settled creed have tried just such a hopeless task. They
forget that while a revelation _from_ God might conceivably be final and
complete, religion deals with a revelation _of_ God. God, the infinite
and eternal, from everlasting to everlasting, the source and crown and
destiny of all the universe--shall a man whose days are as grass rise up
to say that he has made a statement about him which will not need to be
revised? Rather, our prayer should be that the thought of God, the
meaning of God, the glory of God, the plans and purpose of God may expand
in our comprehension until we, who now see in a mirror, darkly, may see
face to face. "Le Dieu defini est le Dieu fini."

This mistaken endeavour, in the interest of stability, to make a vital
movement static is not confined to religion. Those of us who love Wagner
remember the lesson of Die Meistersinger. Down in Nuremberg they had
standardized and conventionalized music. They had set it down in rules
and men like Beckmesser could not imagine that there was any music
permissible outside the regulations. Then came Walter von Stolzing.
Music to him was not a conventionality but a passion--not a rule, but a
life--and, when he sang, his melodies reached heights of beauty that
Beckmesser's rules did not provide for. It was Walter von Stolzing who
sang the Prize Song, and as the hearts of the people were stirred in
answer to its spontaneous melody, until all the population of N