RECONSTRUCTION AND RESTATEMENT. 



13 



that Christianity is played out. But the people will be in- 

 different if those who profess to be leaders of Christian thought 

 are blind to the changes that are going on all around them, and 

 address the men of the twentieth century in terms of the 

 sixteenth or of the sixth ; and the socialist writers would be 

 quite justified in declaring that Christianity was played out, 

 if Christianity meant no more than they can see in it — a mass 

 of external observances and ceremonials tied up with formal 

 beliefs in a number of metaphysical propositions which to them 

 are unintelligible. 



But no one who earnestly desires to see a reconciliation 

 between science and religion, no one who really believes in 

 the Oneness of God's Universe, no one who sincerely regards 

 •the religion of Jesus Christ as intended — divinely intended — for 

 the regeneration of mankind, can for a moment admit that 

 Christianity consists (either wholly or essentially) in either 

 the ceremonials which are observed within its churches and 

 chapels, or in the metaphysical propositions embalmed in its 

 •orthodox creeds. Common honesty at least will compel them 

 to acknowledge that the primitive Christian church existed 

 for at least a century or more before any of the three Creeds 

 was formulated ; that infant baptism is never once mentioned 

 in the Christian Bible ; and that the celebration of the Eucharist, 

 whether in Saint Peter's or Saint Paul's, is a totally different 

 affair from the simple evening meal which Christ shared with 

 His disciples. No more need be said here on this point. There 

 are amongst sincere and devoted Christians some to whom these 

 later developments of sacramental Christianity are entirely 

 helpful, precious, and sacred ; there are others equally sincere 

 and devout who regard them as wholly non-essential, or even as 

 hindrances to the spiritual life. But none of them would say 

 that there is nothing in Christianity except ceremonies and 

 ■creeds. Behind ceremonies and creeds there lies something 

 that if all these were wiped out would remain — the revelation 

 of God to man in the soul, and the revelation of God to man 

 in the face of Jesus Christ. One who after many years of 

 thought has deliberately decided to leave aside as futile and 

 unedifying all metaphysical disputes as to the particular way 

 in which the divine and the human were combined in the 

 person of Jesus Christ, and who therefore abstains con- 

 scientiously from either Trinitarian or Unitarian views, may be 

 permitted to place on record an acknowledgment how in that 

 reservation of belief, that deliberate suspense of judgment, 

 that deliverance from partisanship, he has found an 



