er world which would
before long take the place of the one that was dying; and some of us
believe that, in the new democracy which is stirring into life
throughout the earth, this new and more creative world is being born:

"The millions suffer still and grieve,
And what can helpers heal
With old-world cures men half believe
For woes they wholly feel?

"And yet men have such need of joy!
But joy whose grounds are true;
And joy that should all hearts employ
As when the past was new."

In the figure of Jesus, ethical and aesthetic idealization guided by
religious emotion has created a {97} personality of a peculiarly
appealing type well fitted to remain as an ideal to foster and
strengthen the noblest tendencies. But this ideal has become
practically self-supporting apart from its mythical scaffolding. Its
real foundation to-day is in its appeal to sympathies, natural to
social beings, which the spiritual evolution of humanity has developed
and given content to. When man succeeds in applying these sympathies
rationally, in a social fashion, he may bring upon this sad old earth
some measure of that kingdom for which Jesus longed. But Christianity
has stood and, on the whole, still stands for certain beliefs in regard
to the universe as a whole and the relation of man to it, which only
patient reflection and inductive investigation can settle. By their
very nature, these beliefs cannot have an historical justification
although they have had an historical origin. Taking these beliefs in
their simplest form and separating them from all connection with the
figure of Jesus and the developed ethics whose stimulus goes back to
him, they become an acceptance of an ethical God, a special providence
and immortality. Remove these postulates, and it is doubtful whether
theology has not also disappeared. It behooves us to examine the
validity of these postulates in the light of modern science and
philosophy.

{98}

CHAPTER VIII

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY

The conviction that there is a deep-seated conflict between the
religious view the world, characteristic of the past, and the outlook
which has been shaping under the guiding hands of science and
philosophy is held by an ever increasing number. Those who deny this
conflict are judged to be either willing self-deceivers or postponers
of the evil day of confession. Many books have been written to detail
the w