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. The progressiveness of Christianity is not simply its response to a progressive age; the progressiveness of Christianity springs from its own inherent vitality. So far is this from being regrettable, that a modern Christian rejoices in it and gladly recognizes not only that he is thinking thoughts and undertaking enterprises which his fathers would not have understood, but also that his children after him will differ quite as much in teaching and practice from the modernity of to-day. It has been the fashion to regard this changeableness with wistful regret. So Wordsworth sings in his sonnet on Mutability: "Truth fails not; but her outward forms that bear The longest date do melt like frosty rime, That in the morning whitened hill and plain And is no more; drop like the tower sublime Of yesterday, which royally did wear Its crown of weeds, but could not even sustain Some casual shout that broke the silent air, Or the unimaginable touch of Time." Such wistfulness, however, while a natural sentiment, is not true to the best Christian thought of our day. 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. [1] Leonard Huxley: Scott's Last Expedition, Vol. I, The Journals of Captain R. F. Scott, Rn., C. V. O., p. 417. [2] Kirby Page; The Sword or the Cross, p. 41. [3] Tertullian: De Virginibus Velandis, Cap. I--"Regula quidem fidei una omnino est, sola immobilis et irreformabilis." [4] Vatican Council, July 18, 1870, First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ, Chapter IV, Concerning the Infallible Teaching of the Roman Pontiff. [5] The Papal Syllabus of Errors, A. D. 1864, Sec. 1, 5. [6] Exodus 6:3; Chap. 19. [7] Exodus 33:22-23. [8] Numbers 21:14. [9] Exodus 15:3. [10] Judges 11:24. [11] I Samuel 26:19. [12] II Kings 5:17. [13] Jeremiah 23:24. [14] Psalm 96:5. [15] William Sanday: Christologies Ancient and Modern. LECTURE V THE PERILS OF PROGRESS I