the history of the Church on a scientific basis, as well as that far-off age would permit. Indeed, those early fathers - Polycarp, Irenæus, Papias, Lactantius, Origen, and even Tertullian-did not pretend to expound a theological system, nor did any one church adhere unqualifiably to a distinctive or authoritative interpretation of the Bible or the formulæ of faith. These fathers were rather mere historians, who set forth the principles and phenomena of life and conduct as taught by the Savior, without intending to demand submission to the interpretations they propounded.

In those days there were no theological deliverances, ex cathedra; no heretics; no excommunications. "No system of schools, no scholastic formula, can be drawn from the simple documents that represent primitive Christianity." Had theology been content to remain within such confines, its breast had never been stained with fratricidal blood-neither had the dark shadow of its authority settled like a pall upon the earth.

But when Abelard fought valiantly for a freer interpretation of theology, which had been by slow accretions fastened upon the Church, he aroused the first triumphant protagonist of the faith in Bernard of Clairvaux, whose intensely dogmatic arrogance was singularly inconsistent with his tender heart and exalted life. Abelard was the first reformer, antedating Luther and the Reformationists by several centuries; and his fate prophesied the doom of the free-thinker, when the inauspicious reign of a triumphant hierarchy would be established in the name of Revealed Religion.

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From that day religion has been prostituted and compelled to become the passive servant of sciolists and scholastic jugglers. Belief in set doctrines has been paramount to simple honor and engaging purity. Nor has simple faith in Jesus been sufficient to transpose a soul from the gloom of hell to the glories of heaven. The nature and the characteristics of that faith must needs be analyzed: whether it be faith in him as a man or as God; faith in his ethical precepts or in the distorted interpretation of his spiritual biology which a perverse Church has foisted on the race; faith in the inspiration that his matchless life afforded to holier living and sturdier character, or in the efficiency of his sacrificial blood to rescue believers from the doom of eternal perdition.

Ecclesiastical theology deals not with the evolution of religious experience in mankind, but with the metaphysical doctrines of the vicarious atonement, the nature and person of Jesus Christ, the Holy Trinity, and eternal damnation or salvation. Every one of these doctrines has been imposed upon the race by the arbitrament of war and sealed by the spilled blood of human sacrifices. Such doctrines are vacuous explanations of things inexplicable. So long as they are forced upon the unwilling attention of the race by the terrors of everlasting excommunication, they cause men to neglect the study of their practical and utilitarian relations.

Religion must be divorced from a domineering, procrustean theology, and become the handmaid of a scientific and correct anthropology. Man's duty is to man. Man's relationship is with his fellow

creatures. Man is necessarily limited to human consciousness. Only as he acquaints himself with man can he know the universe; for the universe is registered in his self-conscious experience. Therefore, only as man learns man can he know God; for there is no knowledge of God beyond the knowledge of man. “Man, know thyself!" is a command to know God; for only as God is revealed in the consciousness of man is there any revelation of God. Hence, that is the truest theology which best acquaints man with himself. That is the truest religion which best enables man to approach nearest to his loftiest ideal.

Anthropology, therefore, is the real and only theology-for it may be scientifically apprehended and expounded. It deals with realities, not fantastic figments. It deals with a Deity discoverable, not with one beyond the search of science and the experience of the soul. Such a science is the strength and sustenance of pure religion. Theology transformed into anthropology is truly a revelation writ in the holy scriptures of the human heart.

The religion that shall be universal, and draw within its folds the aspiring among the nations of the earth, will be neither Christian, nor Jewish, nor Mohammedan - neither Buddhistic nor Vedantic. But it will be that religion which, like a bee busy among the flowers, sucks from the heart of each the essence of its sweetness and its life. But no theology that perforce must hoist some standard of authority will ever, as such, conquer the race in the name of religion. The latter is a force in the human heart that tends to perfect the race. The

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former is fatuous speculation, repulsive ostentation, and fustian pedantry.

Religion is an appeal to pure imagination and lofty idealism: theology browbeats the mind and stultifies the heart. Religion nurses, loves, and rescues: theology stabs, wounds, and slays. Religion says, "I persuade ": theology thunders, "I command!" Religion sings its hope: theology grumbles with despair and death. Theology beglooms heaven with the portentous shadow of hell: religion, like the sun, spreads her beams of warmth so far and wide she penetrates even the stygian depths and carries on her bosom the burden of the dead. Religion is Orpheus, who fears not hell nor all its horrors, can he but rescue his fond Eurydice: theology is Pluto, who so mingles hope with temptation that he makes rescue impossible even for one so brave and true as the fabled hero. Religion unyoked from presumptuous theology ever has been and ever will be a benediction to the race; but theology, like a messenger from perdition liveried in the robes of heaven, has ever, like Satan, lured the race to illusion and destruction.

To follow that religion that leads to truth, purity, and love, despite dogmatic traditionalism or presumptive supernaturalism, is an instinct of the heart, obedience to which can lead but to happiness and perennial peace.

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CHAPTER XVII

NE of the saddest facts of history is the demoralization of human ideals. All great

truths have at first come into the world with a blaze of glory. They have stood out clear and defined as the silver moon on a frosty night. Their splendor has, for the time being, out-dazzled all subordinate and antiquated conceptions, as the noonday sun mantles the lesser lights within the folds of his effulgence. But ere long their glory wanes and dim becomes their splendor. As the sun is sometimes. screened behind the darkening clouds, and of his brilliance naught remains but refracted beams of broken light, so the once luminous inspirations of the race disappear in dim and misty symbols.

Nowhere else is this fact so well illustrated as in the history and teaching of Jesus Christ. To appreciate this let us sketch in a few words, and with a hasty outline, the features of this great career. Two thousand years ago a young man, who was destined not to outlive the average longevity of the race, appeared upon the scenes of Galilee and Palestine.

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