By a fortunate power of mind they are able to believe as truths mutually
inconsistent propositions.

Thus the crisis is in fact not so acute as it might seem. No great
institution lives or dies by logic. Christianity rests on great
religious needs which it meets and gratifies, so that its life (like all
other lives) is in unrationalized emotions. Reason seeks ever to
rationalize these, an attempt which seems to destroy yet really
fulfils. As thus the restless reason tests the emotions of the soul,
criticizes the traditions to which they cling, rejects the ancient
dogmas in which they have been defined, the Church slowly participates
in the process: silently this position and that are forsaken, legends
and beliefs once of prime importance are forgotten, or when forced into
controversy many ways are found by which the old and the new are
reconciled: the sharpness of distinctions can be rubbed off, expressions
may be softened, definitions can be modified and half-way resting-places
afforded, until the momentous transition has been made and the
continuity of tradition is maintained. Finally, as the last step, even
the official documents may be revised. Such a process in Christianity is
everywhere in evidence, for even the Roman Church admits the modern
astronomy. So too it accepts the changes in the world of politics with
qualified approval. In the Syllabus of 1864 the separation of state and
church was anathematized, yet in 1906 this separation in the United
States was held up as an example to be followed by the French
government. In the Protestant Churches the process is precisely similar.
No great church has yet modified its articles of religion so as to
admit, for example, that the Garden of Eden was not a definite place
where Eve was tempted, yet the doctrine is contradicted with approval by
individuals, and the results of modern science are accepted and taught
without rebuke. In all this the Church shows its essential oneness with
other organizations of society, the government, the family, which are at
once deeply rooted in the past, and yet subject to the influences of the
present. For Christianity is by no means wholly intellectual, nor
chiefly so. It would be fully as true to facts to describe this religion
as a vast scheme for the amelioration of the condition of humanity. In
education, in care for the sick, the poor, the outcast, it has retained
the spirit of its Lord. Though it has at times denied this spirit, be