Show RSTORTON OF AITR Es r The churches n dogmatic organizations and America are I th tions both in Europe 1ons Actlvcmlnd fupparently breaking up rs led ministers In all of them arc in re 1S Ibolllon against the dogmatic creeds In JcUon agalnst nil repression at once scandalous and W agenbl futile in the shape of heresy trials s 1per Pre e fooliiB on Even the body of the clergy t In their preachings are sensibly receding reced-ing from dogma and not from dogma only but from the supernatural generally gen-erally and from the ascetic or spiritual spirit-ual disregard ot the present world JRS There IB a falling back upon the ethical VE i 1 ethi-cal parts of Christianity and there Is a tendency to dwell IcS upon a future and more UpOI the present state The = tone of eclcatec society generally is I increasingly I in-creasingly skeptical Among the quirk j witted artisans In all countries not al < ountr1 skepticism only but atheism Is making ePtCIRm ddr4 I Kway In France they have come to n er comic Life of Christ The progress of destructive criticism has been fully as great in Germany Holland America and other Protestant Holand countries as I has been In England m Even an official and It may be supposed sup-posed conservative theologian such as i j a professor of theology In the Univer allY of Berlin denies that cither the Jcaus ot history or the Pauline Christ I O Is i for UH a binding object of faith The legends oC paradise and the fall of man have their the same theologian says hl i analogies in several religions and in 1 of religion can them the philosophy relgon ream recognize only symbolic expressions of Omans two nature thE spirit and tho fresh the Ideal Godliko disposition and the lower animal nature This makes Jettison both ot the Old Testament ana i the New and of the whole freight of t COlu orthodox belief Costume fc All free critics are agreed that the n Music 41 fre crics gospels are anonymous and that we Eminent have no mGz C2 ascertaining their authorship au-thorship that the ilrat throe are sliDer y structures on a common documentary I sjj basis about which nothing Is known i oks ftliat HJs Impossible to trace the existence 1 irnes ex-istence of any one of them near enough I ark lo the events to preclude the growth rs I wins the world then was of myth that the I Icrritt VlnR presentation of Christ In tho fourth Ierrlt differs macrlally from that in the other I QUEST three that there arc fatal contradictions contradic-tions as In the genealogies and In the mee 2 accounts of the crucifixion and the res i iurrectlon that there are things clearly clear-ly stamped as fiction such as the demoniac de-moniac miracle which arc Included In the three Jewish gospels but excluded from the fourth which Is Credit tliat 1 hero are things In themselves totally incredible such as the star of Bethlehem 1 Bethle-hem the view ot all the kingdoms of l the earth In the temptation the miraculous mirac-ulous darkness the rending of the temple tem-ple veil and apparition of the dead at ER I the crucifixion which yet are lnsep narl arably connected with the general narrative 4 nar-rative But the destructive process we must rer mournfully confess does not end with the destruction of supernatural Christianity Chris-tianity I extends to the evidence of I 4 1sI JTheism of which some are proposing again like LarevelllereLepaux to make a national religion The most pronounced rationalists for the most i part continue to admit the value of Christian ethics But ethics arc not N TT i religion Nor is belief also general In z the excellence and beauty of Chrisl j character the same thing as belief in his divinity on which Christian churches are founded Toward what A bourne then Is thought critical and f scientific apparently tending I is K E apparently tending to the belief from which our inmost nature recoils in a I universe without guidance or plan tho relation of man to which can never be IT Jknown There can bo no use in cling V 1 jing to the untenable I as we hope reconstruction of faith Is possible our llrat step toward it must be to let the ntenable go J we know anything of the law of the universe it is that ours our-s hatol JIe In the singleminded pursuit pur-Suit of truth Man wIll not rest In clank > agnosticism he is irresistibly Im ipellcd to Inquiry Into his origin and destiny Our business now Jsto loolc fror rational data and most obviously in the Intellectual and moral nature ot ir0 than with its consciousness Its aaplra ttions its sense of responsibility and qualified freedom o will Goldwln Smith in tho Contemporary Review L Loiidon condensed for Public Opinion |