The charge against religion most frequently made by critics who are interested in social reconstruction is that it is a conservative force which impedes social progress. If it has resources which are indispensable for the life of society, social idealists will not appreciate them if its contemporary forms are invariably aligned with the social forces most intent upon preserving the status quo. Contemporary liberal Christianity refutes the charge of social conservatism by appealing to the social radicalism of Jesus which it alleges to have appropriated. By this appeal liberal Christianity exhibits one of the very tendencies of religion which subjects it to the criticism of social liberals. Religion is easily tempted to make devotion to the ideal a substitute for its realization and to become oblivious to the inevitable compromise between its ideal and the brute facts of life. The absolute nature of the ethics of Jesus and the perfect harmony between his religion and his ethics may be the guarantee of the perennial spiritual and ethical renewal of the Christian religion; but it is also occasion for the self-deception of many professed disciples. Many streams of thought have contributed to the current of modern liberal Christianity and it contains alluvial deposits from all Western civilizations. Yet it imagines that it represents a simple return to radical and dynamic ethics of the religion of Jesus. By this deception it easily becomes the façade behind which the brutal facts of modern industrial civilization may be obscured rather than a force by which they might be eliminated. The Protestant Reformation suffered from the same deception. It thought of itself as a return to the original ideal when it was, as a matter of fact, a new type of compromise.