426 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the product of the logical analysis of premises which remain them- 

 selves unverified. The revolt against the confessional orthodoxy, 

 especially in the Presbyterian, Reformed, and Lutheran Churches, 

 is not a sign of decline, as some think, but a wholesome movement 

 which indicates a determination to know the truth and to hold 

 nothing but the truth. 



The Chicago-Lambeth articles, adopted by the whole Anglican 

 communion throughout the world, reduces the essential doctrines 

 of Christ's Church to the Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed; 

 those creeds in which all the great historical churches, the Greek 

 and the Oriental, the Koman and the Protestant, agree. This 

 marks a dogmatic advance, not a dogmatic decline, because it makes 

 the distinction between the essential and unessential doctrines, it 

 defines essential doctrines by holding up ancient fundamental his- 

 torical creeds; it thereby represents all other matters as within 

 the realm of the unessential doctrines, the province of Christian 

 liberty. 



The churches are therefore readjusting themselves in their rela- 

 tion to Christian doctrine, and the Christian community is read- 

 justing itself likewise. The offensive features of Christian dogma, 

 while still retained and advocated by some theologians and some 

 communions, have been in great measure removed by other theo- 

 logians and communions, and the process is going on with great 

 rapidity. The war against science, criticism, literature, and art — 

 all that is characteristic of our age — is gradually being limited to 

 a smaller number of theologians and denominations, and there is 

 ever an increasing number of theologians and churches which fully 

 recognize all the achievements of modern times, and who are at 

 work in harmonizing them with the verified Christian dogmas in a 

 larger, grander system — in a new theology representing all that is 

 noblest and best in Christianity as applied to the modern world. 

 While this process is going on, the dissatisfied ones will take some 

 little time to find their new church homes and to adjust themselves 

 to new conditions and circumstances. 



So far as the great mass of mankind is concerned, the chief 

 factor in the Christian religion is the fundamental one of the Chris- 

 tian life and the Christian institution, and the advance or decline 

 of Christianity will be judged from this point of view. Here, how- 

 ever, we must recognize that there are several types of religious 

 life which sometimes combine in one community, but which ordi- 

 narily exist apart as characteristic of different temperaments, dif- 

 ferent nations, different races. The lines of cleavage in historical 

 Christianity are for the most part racial, national, or tempera- 

 mental. We have to take this into account when we consider the 



