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a course "dealing with some aspect of the history and development of
Christianity as viewed from a liberal and progressive standpoint." The
special subject selected was the development of theology as illustrated
in English poetry, and the lecture is now published in a neat little
volume for the general reader.

We notice the frequent recurrence of the phrase "liberal theology."
Naturally we like everybody to be liberal, but we cannot see the
appropriateness of the epithet in this instance. It would sound strange
to talk of "liberal geology" or "liberal chemistry." Why then should
we talk of "liberal theology"? If theology is anything but an effort
of imagination--as _we_ conceive it--it must be a system of ascertained
truth. Its propositions are therefore true or false, but they cannot
be good or bad, liberal or illiberal. Introduce these epithets, and
you make it a matter of taste and preference, or of conformity or
non-conformity to the spirit of advancing civilisation. This is indeed
what Mr. Brooke appears to mean. He seems to regard theology as
liberal or otherwise as it adapts itself to the growth of knowledge
and morality. He goes to the length of admitting that secular progress
precedes religious progress. "The Church," he says, "has always followed
society." The change in theology, which has made it "liberal," or
produced that variety of it, could not have appeared "in early
Christian times, nor in the middle ages; not as long, that is, as the
imperialistic or feudal theory of humanity and its rulers existed."
Still more decisively, if possible, he repeats this statement:--"There
was no chance then of theology changing until the existing views of
human society changed. If theology was to be enlarged, they must first
be enlarged." Now this is a truth which we have always insisted on,
and the reason of it is destructive to "liberal" and all other kinds of
theology. We are told that God made man, but the fact is that man made
God, and what he made he is able to keep in repair. The growing idea of
God's "love" is not forced upon theologians by a study of nature, nor by
a study of scripture. It is forced upon them by the advancing spirit
of humanity. God was once a being who loved and hated, and all the
"liberal" theologians have done is to minimise his hatred and maximise
his love. God has not made any fresh disclosures of himself, as Mr.
Brooke teaches; the theologians have simply brought him up to date, and
th