The part played by Christianity in the development of Western civilization and its position as chief representative of the religious interpretation of the universe makes our selection of it for study natural. To identify traditional religion with a low stage of its development, in which it is inextricably bound up with crude myth and ritualistic magic, is not a fair procedure. We must take theology at its best and place it over against science and philosophy before we can rightly judge it. Only then can we be certain whether it stands for anything vital, significant and true. For the Western {59} world, at least, Christian theology is generally acknowledged to represent the high-water mark of theology. If it is intrinsically inadequate and untrue to modern experience, the only course open to a morally and intellectually courageous man is to resign it as a view outgrown. No matter how much pain may arise from a break with old associations and from the relinquishment of false hopes, intellectual morality permits only one course. It may be that social morality will gain new life when the old forms are broken, for the letter killeth. I mean that Christian ethics will operate more freely and creatively in the world when it is given an entirely humanistic setting. In dreaming of a super-mundane god, man has only too often forgotten his fellow man. In yearning for the coming of the divine kingdom, he has allowed his hands and feet to be idle, or has even stepped unheeding over the prostrate forms of men and children broken in the mart. To remove theology from Christianity is to make the kingdom of this world. The content of Christianity cannot be separated from its origin. To do so is to open the door to private interpretations of all sorts and to facilitate duplicity and self-deception. Christianity is an historical fact, and has meant various pretty definite things. If we have outgrown certain of these things and re-interpreted others in a fundamental way, we are not making for clearness of thought by trying to read our own outlook into the past. Continuity of a spiritual kind there has been, but there is also newness of a basic import. The knowledge and atmosphere which confront it to-day are vastly different from the theosophy in which it was born and nourished. {60}