SCIEXCE AND CONSCIENCE. 19 



rality are part of the change which in matters of government is rep- 

 resented by the decay of aristocracy and the spread of democracy. 

 " The theory of the Church," Mr. Stopford Brooke says (" Faith and 

 Freedom," Boston, 1881, page 333), "is an aristocratic theory, and it 

 has ministered to that imperialistic conception of God which in the- 

 ology has done as much harm as despotism or caste system of any kind 

 has done to society." In England the Church exists as a part of the 

 general aristocratic system of a country in which non-conformity is 

 detested mainly as a social stigma ; in America we see the clearest 

 proofs of the altered circumstances, and these are visible on every side. 

 The formal side of ecclesiasticism loses its force, while ethical teaching 

 gives and receives fresh life. Dogmas linger a couple of centuries be- 

 hind what people really believe, and even the most conservative are 

 far more liberal than they try to be, or than they say they are. Even 

 the most fervent Roman Catholic refuses to believe that his Protestant 

 friend is doomed to eternal damnation. 



If theology is willing to satisfy itself with furthering right living 

 and right thinking, its future is bright ; if it demands assent to irrec- 

 oncilable dogmas, it must in time disappear like everything which rests 

 on sheer authority. Yet probably no age will ever be confronted with 

 this direct question ; the present one has come near it, and, while a 

 century ago the general discussion was tabooed by the cautious, lest 

 the whole social system should be swept by the board, it is now seen 

 more or less clearly that men can think variously about dogmas with- 

 out relapsing into barbarism. In time this will be generally acknowl- 

 edged what we now feel in our hearts that the eternal laws of risjht 

 and wrong, of justice and injustice, of truth and falsehood, are safe 

 from the bungling of copyists, the destruction of wars, and the con- 

 fusion of commentators. 



This, however, is taking us from the question immediately before 

 us, which is the relation that religion bears to contemporary thought. 

 We can judge of what may be in store in the future only from the 

 past and the present. If we fail to detect any modification of older 

 ways of thought, there is no firm ground for prophecy about what is 

 yet to happen. Yet we have seen Christianity molded into a church 

 by the force of the current Roman ideas ; we have seen feudalism tri- 

 umphant in things terrestrial and things celestial ; we have seen new 

 freedom come into relisrion as into the rest of the world with the Re- 

 naissance, and we have seen a renewed reaction into old ideas follow- 

 ing this freedom, as we see medievalism in the fantastic robes and 

 many candles of the Church when, in its turn, it was affected by the 

 Romantic movement. In the wider freedom that begets science we 

 see new tolerance for freedom of thought, and this freedom of thought 

 can not fail to undermine some of the artificial constructions of the 

 past. That it will destroy the essential principles of religion need 

 scarcely be feared, any more than that science will expel literature. 



