science accept the moral teachings of Christ than to convince the reason of the reality of miracles and of His corporeal resurrection?

INFALLIBLE AUTHORITY IN PROTESTANTISM IS ILLOGICAL1

The Protestant dogma of authority never had, nor could have, the simplicity, the plenitude, the efficacy of the Catholic dogma. For Protestantism to undertake to constitute such a dogma is a pure inconsistency. The Protestant churches do not believe themselves infallible; how, then, can they constitute an infallible canon of sacred books, or borrow such a canon without the slightest criticism from the tradition of another church, a thousand times convicted of error?

THE BIBLE VALUABLE BUT NOT PERFECT 2

What, then, is Scripture, and what honour belongs to it? In truth a very great honour. It is not the mistress of true Christianity, but it is its servant. The servant need not be perfect; it suffices that she be faithful. Scripture is the fixation on paper of the evident Christian tradition; but because it is the earliest it is also the surest, and as the document most worthy of faith of all that we possess, forever commands the respect of all those who, like the Reformers, desire to go to the fountain-head and learn the authentic gospel from Christ and His apostles.

Yet this earliest tradition, taken as a whole, is not more secure than others from error, forgetfulness, imperfections, and additions. If it contains gold and silver, said Luther, it has also its hay and stubble. This is why it is ever subject to the criticism both of the 1 By Auguste Sabatier. Religions of Authority. p. 154. 2 By Auguste Sabatier. Religions of Authority. p. 162.

Christian consciousness and of science.

Far from ex

cluding necessary criticism, the original principle of Protestantism requires and inaugurates it.

WE MUST NOT DEPEND ON AUTHORITY IN RELIGION 1

Obviously, the point where this progressive conception of Christianity comes into conflict with many widely accepted ideas is the abandonment which it involves of an external and inerrant authority in matters of religion. The marvel is that that idea of authority, which is one of the historic curses of religion, should be regarded by so many as one of the vital necessities of the faith. The fact is that religion by its very nature is one of the realms to which external authority is least applicable. In science people commonly suppose that they do not take truth on any one's authority; they prove it. In business they do not accept methods on authority; they work them out. In statesmanship they no longer believe in the divine right of kings nor do they accept infallible dicta handed down from above. But they think that religion is delivered to them by authority and that they believe what they do believe because a divine church. or a divine book or a divine man told them.

In this common mode of thinking, popular ideas have the truth turned upside down. The fact is that science, not religion, is the realm where most of all we use external authority. They tell us that there are millions of solar systems scattered through the fields of space. Is that true? How do we know? We never counted them. We know only what the authorities say. They tell us that the next great problem in science is breaking up the atom to discover the incalculable resources of power there waiting to be harnessed by our skill. Is that

1 By Harry Emerson Fosdick. Christianity and Progress. p. 157-65. Copyright (1922), Fleming H. Revell & Co. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.

true? Most of us do not understand what an atom is, and what it means to break one up passes the farthest reach of our imaginations; all we know is what the authorities say. They tell us that electricity is a mode of motion in ether. Is that true? Most of us have no first-hand knowledge about electricity. The motorman calls it "juice" and that means as much to us as to call it a mode of motion in ether; we must rely on the authorities. They tell us that sometime we are going to talk through wireless telephones across thousands of miles, so that no man need ever be out of vocal communication with his family and friends. Is that true? It seems to us an incredible miracle, but we suppose that it is so, as the authorities say. In a word, the idea that we do not use authority in science is absurd. Science is precisely the place where nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand use authority the most. The chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy which the authorities teach is the only science which most of us possess.

There is another realm, however, where we never think of taking such an attitude. They tell us that friendship is beautiful. Is that true? Would we ever think of saying that we do not know, ourselves, but that we rely on the authorities? Far better to say that our experience with friendship has been unhappy and that we personally question its utility! That, at least, would have an accent of personal, original experience in it. For here we are facing a realm where we never can enter at all until we enter, each man for himself.

Two realms exist, therefore, in each of which firsthand experience is desirable, but in only one of which it is absolutely indispensable. We can live on what the authorities in physics say, but there are no proxies for the soul. Love, friendship, delight in music and in nature, parental affection-these things are like eating and breathing; no one can do them for us; we must enter the experience for ourselves. Religion, too, belongs in this

last realm. The one vital thing in religion is first-hand, personal experience. Religion is the most intimate, inward, incommunicable fellowship of the human soul. In the words of Plotinus, religion is "the flight of the alone to the Alone." You never know God at all until you know Him for yourself. The only God you ever will know is the God you do know for yourself.

This does not mean, of course, that there are no authorities in religion. There are authorities in everything, but the function of an authority in religion, as in every other vital realm, is not to take the place of our eyes, seeing in our stead and inerrantly declaring to us what it sees; the function of an authority is to bring to us the insight of the world's accumulated wisdom and the revelations of God's seers, and so to open our eyes that we may see, each man for himself. . . . That is the only use of authority in a vital realm. It can lead us up to the threshold of a great experience where we must enter, each man for himself, and that service to the spiritual life is the Bible's inestimable gift.

...

If, however, Christianity is thus a life, we cannot stereotype its expressions in set and final forms. If it is a life in fellowship with the living God, it will think new thoughts, build new organizations, expand into new symbolic expressions. We cannot at any given time write "finis" after its development. We can no more "keep the faith" by stopping its growth than we can keep a son by insisting on his being forever a child. . . . He who believes in the living God, while he will be far from calling all change progress, and while he will, according to his judgment, withstand perverse changes with all his might, will also regard the cessation of change as the greatest calamity that could befall religion. Stagnation in thought or enterprise means death for Christianity as certainly as it does for any other vital movement. Stagnation, not change, is Christianity's most deadly enemy, for this is a progressive world, and in a

progressive world no doom is more certain than that which awaits whatever is belated, obscurantist and reactionary.

CHRISTIANITY AND THE NEW LIGHT1

There are many people who seem to think that all the changes which are now palpably passing over the religious belief, not only of scholars and students but of ordinary religious people, are changes for the worse. They may perhaps be inevitable, they may be forced upon us by loyalty to truth, but, it is assumed, they cannot possibly represent, from a moral and spiritual point of view, any improvement upon the theories of the universe which are being discarded. They cannot possibly constitute a spiritual gain. The most that the modern theologian or apologist can do is to prevent the new truth doing any particular harm. Old ideas are given up regretfully and half-heartedly and the religious man tries to console himself with the reflection that after all enough is left of the old truth to enable people to lead decent lives and go to heaven when they die, although the church can hardly hope nowadays to produce such saints as were produced before the days when modern science and research had begun to limit the number and the burdensomeness of the beliefs which used to be considered necessary to salvation.

HIGHER SPIRITUAL IDEAS

It seems to me that this attitude is a very great mistake. I believe that modern science and historical study have given us, not only truer but higher and more spiritually helpful ideas about human life than the beliefs which are being outlived. And not only so, but the new truth, so far from overshadowing or supplanting what

1 By the late H. Hastings Rashdall, Dean of Carlisle. Christian Century. 40: 235-7. February 22, 1923.