industrial and commercial expansion of Western civilization. Since liberal Christianity is the product of an adjustment of the main tenets of orthodox Protestantism to the sophistication of the cities and the growing intelligence of the privileged and therefore educated classes, its whole moral atmosphere is much more determined by the special interests of these classes than it is willing to admit. The authority of Jesus, to which it appeals, has indeed been given a new emphasis, but this has been done because liberal Christianity valued the theological simplicity rather than the moral austerity of his gospel. In the same way many liberal Jews have appealed from the law to the prophets, not because they had a great passion for the ethical rigors of an Amos or Isaiah but because they found obedience to the minute exactions of the law too onerous in a sophisticated age. Jesus is valuable to the modern Christian because he offers an escape from the theological absurdities of the ancient creeds; meanwhile his ethical and religious idealism will not leave the lives of those who profess to follow him unaffected. In time it may become the instrument of the regeneration of Western society; but this will not be possible if the liberal church does not overcome its self-deception and realizes that its religious and moral life is a composite into which have entered the imperialism of Rome, the sophistication of the Greeks, the fierce tribalism and individualism of the Nordics and the prudential ethics of an industrial civilization.