But although Dr. Fosdick implies that this solves the difficulty, it can be shown, I believe, that it does not. What he has succeeded in doing is to disentangle from the Bible a meaning for immortality which has a noble tradition behind it and is at the same time intellectually possible for a modern man. But the history of religion ought to put us on guard against assuming too easily [p046] that a statement of the purest truth is in itself capable of affecting the lives of any considerable number of people. Dean Inge, who is a very much more clear-headed churchman, says quite frankly that “a religion succeeds, not because it is true, but because it suits the worshippers.” Merely to tell men, however fervently, that they may conquer mortality by renouncing the flesh, will not go far toward persuading many of them to renounce the flesh. There must be, as there has been in all the historic religions, something more than a statement of the moral law. There must be a psychological machinery for enforcing the moral law. For those who are suited to the religion of the spirit no machinery is needed. But for the mass of men who are not naturally suited to it, a machinery which compels this conversion is indispensable. Jesus in his time, and Gautama Buddha before him, taught a moral law which was addressed to those who could receive it. They were not many. Buddhism and Christianity became world religions centuries after the death of their founders, and only when there had been added to the central message a great organized method of teaching it. The essence of such an organization is the title to say with apostolic certainty that the message is true. Churchmen, like Dr. Fosdick, can make no such claim about their message. They reject revelation. They reject the authority of any church to speak directly for God. They reject the literal inspiration of the Bible. They reject altogether many parts of the Bible as not only uninspired, but false and misleading. They do not believe in God as a lawgiver, judge, father, and spectator of human life. [p047] When they say that this or that message in the Bible is “permanently valid,” they mean only that in their judgment, according to their reading of human experience, it is a well-tested truth. To say this is not merely to deny that the Bible is authoritative in astronomy and biology; it is to deny equally that it is authoritative as to what is good and bad for men. The Bible thus becomes no more than a revered collection of hypotheses which each man may reject or accept in the light of his own knowledge.