Science Christianity and Modern Civilisation 341 



express the deepest convictions of an age like our own than one 

 which cannot take history thus seriously. 



But if the emphasis of Christianity on history is after all con- 

 genial rather than otherwise to the spirit of the present day, this 

 would by no means qualify it to play an important part in the 

 civilised world if it led to a mere uncritical adherence to historical 

 tradition ; if it made Christians intent only on guarding a dogmatic 

 deposit, and not on seeking to apply the principles of their creed to 

 the changed and changing conditions of the human race. But 

 one who looks below the surface of the religious life of our time, 

 among ourselves at least, will find something very different from 

 such mere conservatism. He will find a spirit of independent and 

 active criticism of tradition alive among the very people who are 

 most vigorously engaged in presenting Christianity to the world 

 as a rule of life — for example, in the Student Christian Movement, 

 and in the mission field. He will find a real advance toward mutual 

 understanding between members of different Christian denomina- 

 tions, which has already made a reunion of the Churches on a scale 

 scarcely dreamed of within living memory, although doubtless an 

 ideal which no prudent person expects to see realised in the near 

 future, still a matter of practical politics, in a sense in which it was 

 not such in the youth of men who are not yet much past middle-age. 



4. Christianity and Scientific Civilisation 



A contrast especially notable to those interested in the general 

 subject to the consideration of which this volume is devoted is that 

 between the attitude to scientific views which challenge Christian 

 tradition adopted by Christian theologians half a century ago and 

 that of their successors to-day. No such outcry as that with which 

 the theories of Darwin were received has been aroused by those of 

 Freud, although the latter might well seem fraught with far more 

 danger to the ordinary Christian's religious life than the former. 

 On the contrary, the reception accorded by the religious world to 

 the speculations of the psycho-analysts is chargeable rather with 

 undue precipitation than with excessive suspicion or distrust. The 

 change of which this. is a particular instance is intimately connected 

 with a revolution — for it is no less — in the view taken of the Bible 

 by educated Christians generally. It is not merely that they have 

 abandoned belief in its verbal inspiration ; it is that recognition 



