342 Science Religion and "Reality 



of the supreme religious value of the teaching to be found in the 

 Bible is no longer felt to involve the assumption that, because some- 

 thing is in the Bible, it must be in some sense true and important, 

 or that something is lacking to what is otherwise true and important 

 until sanction for it can be found in the Bible. Even quite orthodox 

 and earnest teachers of religion do not scruple to express disagree- 

 ment with a sacred writer ; and feel no temptation to force upon 

 scriptural texts by ingenious devices, of allegorism or the like, 

 meanings which one might wish them to bear but which are clearly 

 quite remote from their obvious primary intention. No doubt 

 there are many circles still little, if at all, affected by this reaction 

 from the old veneration of the books which were formerly held, 

 in the phrase still officially used by the Roman Church, to " have 

 God for their author " ; no doubt that Church itself, the most 

 numerous of Christian communions, continues (although the close 

 observer will not be inclined to think it in fact untouched by the 

 new spirit) to affirm unchanged the traditional estimate of the Bible. 

 But, when all allowances have been made, the fact that a revolution 

 is in progress in this matter can scarcely be denied by any candid 

 student of the religious situation. Great as the change made by 

 that revolution promises to be, however, it has not the appearance 

 of heralding the disappearance of Christianity. A religion which 

 in its cradle survived the disappointment of those confident hopes 

 of a return of its Founder within the lifetime of the generation 

 that had seen Him in the flesh, which seem to have loomed so 

 large in the minds of the first disciples, has shown from the first a 

 wonderful capacity of retaining an unmistakable identity through 

 changes of a very far-reaching kind. In such changes as have 

 actually taken place we have, indeed, to note loss as well as gain. 

 Thus, when critics of the Reformation in the sixteenth century 

 speak of it as " deformation," or critics of the revival in recent 

 times of Catholic ideas and practices in the Churches of the 

 Reformation describe it as "reaction," their strictures are not 

 altogether without justification. Yet in either case we may observe 

 a combination of reversion to type {e.g. to primitive simplicity or to 

 primitive sacramentalism) with an appropriation of new elements 

 belonging to the contemporary civilisation {e.g. nationalism or 

 romanticism) which gives evidence at once of essential stability 

 and of vigorous vitality. In comparing Christianity once more 

 with Hinduism, which also has for ages preserved a certain identity 



