SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY. 331 



in their rigid literal belief, demanding the uncon- 

 ditional surrender of reason to dogma. Liberal 

 Protestantism, on the other hand, took refuge in a 

 kind of monistic pantheism, and sought a means of 

 reconciling two contradictory principles. It endea- 

 voured to combine the unavoidable recognition of the 

 established laws of nature, and the philosophic con- 

 clusions that followed from them, with a purified form 

 of religion, in which scarcely anything remained of 

 the distinctive teaching of faith. There were many 

 attempts at compromise to be found between the two 

 extremes ; but the conviction rapidly spread that 

 dogmatic Christianity had lost every foundation, and 

 that only its valuable ethical contents should be saved 

 for the new monistic religion of the twentieth century. 

 As, however, the existing external forms of the 

 dominant Christian religion remained unaltered, and 

 as, in spite of a progressive political development, 

 they are more intimately than ever connected with the 

 practical needs of the State, there has arisen that 

 widespread religious profession in educated spheres 

 which we can only call "Pseudo-Christianity" — at 

 the bottom it is a "religious lie" of the worst 

 character. The great dangers which attend this 

 conflict between sincere conviction and the hypo- 

 critical profession of modern pseudo-Christians are 

 admirably described in Max Nordau's interesting 

 work on The Conventional Lies of Civilization. 



In the midst of this obvious falseness of prevalent 

 pseudo- Christianity there is one favourable circum- 

 stance for the progress of a rational study of nature : 

 its most powerful and bitterest enemy, the Eoman 

 Church, threw off its mask of ostensible concern for 

 higher mental development about the middle of the 



