And this fact dispenses me from the need to drag the reader into the somewhat tiring labyrinth of proof and disproof which these warring theologians have constructed. Nothing could be further from my mind than the presumptuous and immodest wish to brand the clergy as dishonest, and their beliefs as superstitious, because I happen to regard those beliefs as false. Let the position be clearly understood. A study of the _Hibbert Journal_ or any scholarly theological periodical, or of any batch of learned theological works, will apprise any person that what are ordinarily conceived to be the fundamental positions of the Christian religion are challenged by a large proportion of distinguished divines. Pleas of "reconstruction" are constantly put before us; and at the Church of England Congress in 1912 it was plainly decided by the presiding Archbishop of York that the "advanced" theologians had a legitimate place in the Church. It is not a question of a few controverted points in the scheme of Christian doctrine. No point that is specifically Christian is left unchallenged. The divinity and miracles--especially the miraculous birth and resurrection--of Christ, the prophecies, the doctrine of heaven and hell, the divine guidance of the Church, the fall and redemption of man--all these characteristic doctrines are gravely disputed within the frontiers of the Churches themselves, wherever freedom of expression is permitted. One would prefer to rely on theologians only in such a matter, but for my purpose it is not immaterial to add that outside the ranks of the clergy scholarship is overwhelmingly against these doctrines. There has been a good deal of unsubstantial talk about the beliefs of living men of intellectual eminence, but resolute efforts have been made of late years to wring from them a profession of Christian belief, and the result has been so meagre that my statement is fully justified. A large number declare that they are on the side of "religion." But one has only to reflect that even Sir Oliver Lodge warmly professes to be a Christian--and is, in fact, welcomed to read the lessons in church--to see how little is conveyed by such expressions. The supreme effort of the Churches to secure adhesions of this kind is probably found in Mr. Tabrum's _Religious Beliefs of Scientists_ (1910), and a study of that extraordinary jumble of the living and the dead, the distinguished and the obscure, the really believing Christians and the men who are notoriously not, will convince any person of the failure of the Churches to obtain the literal adhesion of even a respectable proportion of our distinguished men: not men of science merely--it is a stupid error to suppose that the decay of faith is more or less confined to them--but men of eminence in any department of research or intellectual life. Not one in ten of them, in any educated country of the Christian world to-day, has ever professed a belief in the