born out of the economic and political necessities of an industrial and commercial state which cannot afford to indulge in the fanatic nationalism to which peasants and agrarian aristocrats are prone. Liberal Christianity as it has developed in the urban centers of the Western world grew out of the intellectual and religious needs of the privileged classes and bears the marks of its social environment just as much as the other types of religion which have preceded it and with which it is historically related. It is in the same danger of becoming a spiritual sublimation of the peculiar interests and prejudices of these classes while it imagines itself the bearer of an unconditioned message to its day. It has preserved the same individualistic ethics which has characterized orthodox Protestantism and which is so dear to the hearts of the commercial classes, and so unequal to the moral problems of a complex civilization in which the needs of interdependence outweigh the values of personal liberty. The supposed devotion of the privileged classes to a religion in which the sacrifice rather than the stubborn preservation of individual rights is enjoined and in which the prudential and utilitarian root of morality is completely plucked out is one of the incongruities which frequently occur when a civilization harks back to the spiritual visions of its childhood in order to obscure the sober and disenchanted practicality of its maturity. If the modern church is really to become an instrument of social redemption, it must learn how to divorce itself from the moral temper of its age even while it tries to accommodate itself to the intellectual needs of the generation. The religion of Jesus is free of theological absurdities. Its very simplicity saves it from undue entanglements with discredited cosmologies. But those who espouse it chiefly for this reason easily miss its real genius. Its essential assumptions may not outrage the mind, but neither are they readily accepted by an age which has sanctified cool and careful, moral prudence. Its solemn injunction, “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink ... but seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you,” is strangely anachronistic in a day which worships obvious and tangible success and appreciates virtue only as it insures those advantages of health and prosperity which are its highest desiderata. Prudential morality has its own uses. Few men have either the imagination or the courage to pursue an ideal if it does not justify itself by some fairly immediate advantage. Society is not altogether the loser if men discover that “Godliness is profitable unto all things,” and espouse an ideal because they have their eye upon the concrete and obvious advantages which flow from it. But a prudential morality has its limitations and these will prove less detrimental to society if they are not sanctified by religion. It is