322 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



between right and wrong, and for the unsettled and weak convictions 

 as to good and evil ; and, furthermore, that it is accountable for much 

 of the prevailing unbelief and skepticism, for, without some collateral 

 and corroborative evidence to support naked affirmations, faith be- 

 comes weak, and lapses into superstitious credulity, or is abandoned 

 for the more satisfactory — if not more intelligent — negations of infi- 

 delity and agnosticism. And it must be admitted that it has always 

 been difficult to hold the average of Christians to an unfaltering faith 

 in the evangelical doctrines of Christianity — the Trinity, the divinity 

 of Christ, the atonement, etc. — that but few have a clear conception 

 of any of them, that many deny one or more of them, that no two 

 understand them alike, and that all have doubts and fears with re- 

 spect to them ; and, therefore, the New Theology most earnestly pro- 

 tests against the arbitrary and inconsiderate church canon which 

 exacts unreserved or even nominal assent to all or to any articles of 

 faith as a requirement of God and a condition of the divine favor and 

 the soul's salvation. It does not question the soundness of the doc- 

 trines affirmed, but it recognizes the impossibility of making all men 

 see them alike, or of holding them to a credulous assent to them ; and 

 affirms that many who doubt and many who disbelieve them are 

 among the most exemplary of mankind ; that the sacred Scriptures 

 comprehensively understood do not exact uniformity of faith in order 

 to salvation ; and that were any symbol the basis of hope it could not 

 be of universal application, and would, therefore, not be ada]Dted to 

 humanity, or be consistent with either the divine or human nature. 

 It assumes that saving faith is that recognition of what is right and 

 best which enforces its practice ; and the sincerity and strength of 

 faith are determined by the degree of the conformity of the heart and 

 life of the subject to the character and requirements of the ideal. In 

 other words, the aim and effort of a man to be in accord with what 

 he sincerely regards the true and the perfect, whether that be fetich- 

 ism or Christianity, is the exercise of saving faith, and secures the 

 soul its highest commendation and the divine favor ; and, since its 

 real excellence is in sincerity, it may be as perfect and as acceptable 

 in its first timid appliance by the feeble as in its last bold assurance 

 by the strong. 



The New Theology is not a positive philosophy which rejects or 

 agnosticizes the unknowable and the incomprehensible. It accepts 

 authority as the starting-point of inquiry, which is skeptical but open 

 to evidence, and takes the reasonable and the probable rather than the 

 positive or the absolute as the only attainable presumption of truth 

 and error. And since problematic conviction constitutes the sum of 

 all human knowledge, and forms the basis of all human activity, it 

 regards as impractical theorists, insensible to the operative agencies 

 of the ages, all who reject the probable for the positive. 



Starting out with these leading ideas that no creed can be final bo 



