OF BABYLONIAN CONCEPTIONS ON JEWISH THOUGHT. 317 



clergymen from teaching and ministrations whose views of 

 Christian dogma differ from those usually accepted as correct. 

 The answer is perfectly simple to those who realize the above 

 principle. Men's reason must be left free to act, reason being 

 a divine gift to man. But if they are led or mis-led by it to 

 believe and teach things luhich degrade or spoil spiritual and 

 moral life in man, then it is the duty of authority to safeguard 

 the deposit of spiritual truth, revealed through Judaism and 

 Christianity. Where authority has so often blundered, and 

 that it has done so was admitted by Bishop Talbot in his 

 article in the Nineteenth Century of November, 1911, was in 

 coercing men to accept beliefs which have no direct relation to 

 spiritual life. A man may be quite as good a man if he holds 

 with Galileo that the earth goes round the sun, as he would if 

 he believed, as the Ptolemaic system taught, that the reverse 

 was the case. The modern Eoman doctrine of infallibility 

 admits this, because its distinction between fallible and cx 

 cathedra pronouncements is simply the same as that between 

 scientific or historical and spiritual truth. 



No right-minded churchman will complain of the exercise of 

 authority in matters of dogma, if it is manifestly and clearly 

 guided by this principle. 



Another enormous gain following the admission of this 

 distinction would be the confining of men's religious energies 

 to questions of real importance. 



It seems to me one of the saddest phases of our modern and 

 mediaeval Christianity that we magnify out of all due pro- 

 portion questions which are comparatively unimportant, and, 

 spending our energies on these, have too little time or strength 

 left to do the real work of our Master, like the Pharisee of old. 

 E.g., the differences between different sections of Christians in 

 dogma and in ceremonial drive out the thought of the duties 

 in which all should join — the spreading of spiritual truth, so 

 as to influence daily life. But the former is the human, the 

 imperfect, the doubtful ; the latter the certain, the divine, the 

 important. 



All these advantages may come as the direct result of the 

 work done by archseology, science, and the higher criticism. 

 Instead of injuring divine truth, they clear it from the mists 

 of ignorance, superstition, and unreality. Christianity (seen 

 as these sciences show it) is an infinitely nobler thing than it 

 was before, viz., what it was in the time of its Founder, before 

 later accretions destroyed its beauty, reality, and purity. 



Another point worthy of consideration is the question how 



