238 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



beliefs, but in social instincts. All sin is thus resolved 

 into an anti-social act : a wrong done by man to 

 man. 



This is not merely readjustment ; it is revolution. 

 For it is the rejection of theology with its appeals 

 to human obligation to deity, and to man's hopes of 

 future reward or fears of future punishment ; and it 

 is the acceptance of wholly secular motives as in- 

 centives to right action. Those motives, having 

 their foundation in the physical, mental, and moral 

 results of our deeds, rest on a stable basis. No 

 longer interlaced with the unstable theological, they 

 neither abide nor perish with it. And one redeem- 

 ing feature of our time is that the Churches are 

 beginning to see this, and to be affected by it. 

 John Morley caustically remarks that ' the efforts 

 of the heterodox have taught them to be better 

 Christians than they were a hundred years ago.' 

 Certain extremists excepted, they are keeping dogma 

 in the background, and are laying stress on the 

 socialism which it is contended was at the heart of 

 the teaching of Jesus. Wisely, if not very con- 

 sistently, they are seeking alliance with the liberal 

 movements whose aim is the 'abolition of privilege.' 

 The liberal theologians, in the face of the varying 

 ethical standards which mark the Old Testament 

 and the New, no longer insist on the absoluteness of 

 moral codes, and so fall into line with the evolu- 

 tionist in his theory of their relativeness. For society 

 in its advance from lower to higher conceptions of 

 duty, completely reverses its ethics, looking back 

 with horror on that which was once permitted and 

 unquestioned. 



