motion. The privileged position mentioned by Dr. Boyce Gibson plays its special part as the position near which the relation and its changes with change of position and motion are most easily observed. From the values of the relation function and its rates of change in the neighbourhood of this privileged position, its general expression is determined.

The contentions upheld in this article may be summarized as follows:

(1) Physical science establishes the sufficiency but not the necessity of its description of the physical uni

verse;

(2) There is therefore no justification for the uncritical assumption of the existence of objective realities corresponding to the concepts embodied in scientific theory;

(3) Such assumptions are apt to restrict free development;

(4) From the point of view of the physicist the most satisfactory interpretation of the Theory of Relativity is that which regards it as a description of relations, not as an improved description of objects.

THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS SITUATION.

By

FRANCIS ANDERSON, M.A.. Emeritus Professor of

"H

Philosophy, University of Sydney.

ERETICAL" and "Modernist" are question-begging epithets which have little meaning when applied outside the restricted sphere of theological controversy. Even within that sphere they are no longer used with the same confidence as of old. A Scottish theologian astonishes his countrymen by telling them that "the hope of Christianity is heresy." A Bishop of London sits on the stool of repentance and confesses (apropos of "Christian Science") that "the Church has to learn from heresy to-day, as it had learned in time past. There was not one single heresy that had ever existed, that was not recalling the Church to some forgotten truth." Verily, the heretics have not lived and suffered and died in vain. Modernism, apart from its use as a favourite ecclesiastical brickbat, is a name for a confused and confusing medley of opinions, including the various and varying opinions of Mr. H. G. Wells, who has perhaps done more, in his writings on religion, to contribute to the general muddle-headedness of popular thought, than any other writer of equal notoriety. seems impossible to define Modernism, or even to describe it, except in vague and negative terms. Thus, Canon Papillon (Contemporary Review, Sept. 1922) can tell us no more than "it is a temper or tendency—the temper of an age or period of progress, a new point of view about old truths, a fresh spiritua! outlook-It is not a faith nor a system, nor a doctrine. It formulates no new creed . . . the old truths are being presented afresh, the old formularies take on a different meaning. The faith is not changed, truth is unaltered, but we are changing our point of view.' This is interesting, but not specially enlightening. It is what one might say of a landscape, looked at from a new point of view-with one's head upside down.

It

The religious situation has certainly changed. In former times religion claimed empire over the minds and consciences of men. There followed disputes between the churches, and competition between creeds. These now seem unimportant (internecine struggles which hurt no one but the parties themselves) compared with the greater problem, which concerns the very existence of religion itself. "Every religion begins as an intuition, and ends as an institution, and churches as

institutions are, we are told by sociologists, fast becoming organs without useful functions, survivals of the past. Theologies have ceased to have value as knowledge, whatever other value they may have had in earlier ages of human ignorance. At the best they are regarded as harmless excursions into the regions of the unknown and the unknowable. And since churches apparently cannot get on without theologies, when the latter go, the former will follow, having lost the reason for their existence. Lastly, the value and permanence of religion itself are questioned. We are informed by the latest Psychology and Sociology, that, although religion may continue to exist as a fact of the individual consciousness, it will not endure as a social fact, a fact of the collective consciousness. It arose and continued under special conditions of the human spirit, and in response to certain social needs. It was a product of the human spirit, a not inglorious product, yet still a product and a transitory product, destined to disappear with growth of knowledge and advance of the social conscience. Humanity can look on with tranquillity at the gradual disappearance of religion. The time of its passing has come. Be the church "worldly" or "unworldly," the world will cease to have use for it. It will be replaced by something better and more efficient-the State with its multifarious agencies covering the whole life of man, a humanitarian conscience, and an enlightened secular morality. Thus far the latest psychology and sociology. The latest politics sound a still bolder note. The leading Socialist newspaper of Berlin appeared on Christmas morning with this legend printed in large letters across the top of its front page. WHAT WE WANT IS NOT SALVATION, BUT REVOLUTION! What the ordinary "man in the street" wants is more difficult to discover, for he speaks with many and discordant voices. The future historian will probably derive his knowledge of the attitude of that many-headed individual from the evidence of the popular fiction of our day. We may not, therefore, go far wrong if we quote from the most widely circulated novel of the season. "The old revelation was good for the old world, and suited the old world, and told in terms of the old world's understanding We want a new revelation in terms of the new world's understanding. We want light, light. Do you suppose that a man who lives on meat is going to find sustenance in bread and milk? Do you suppose that an age that knows wireless is going to find sustenance in the food of an age that thought thunder was God speaking? Man's done with it. It means nothing to him; it gives nothing to him. And the churches, instead of giving him light, invite him to

dancing and picture shows. Light, light he wants, and the Padres come down to him and drink beer with him, and sing music-hall songs with him, and call it making religion a living thing in the lives of the people. Lift the hearts of the people to God, they say, by showing them that religion is not incompatible with having a jolly fine time. And there's no God there that a man can understand to be lifted to." (If Winter Comes.)

In the strong light thrown by the impressionist artists in fiction on its excrescences and extravagances, modern religious life is made to appear in false perspective. It must not be forgotten that now, as in the past, the finest elements in civilisation come to many if not to most young people, through the teaching and example of the servants and ministers of Christ-ideas of self-discipline and temperance, reverence for honour and truth, respect for humanity, and loving care and kindness for the suffering and the weak. Christianity has made Christendom what it is by the habits of thought and life which have passed into the substance of its being, rather than by the inculcation of doctrines, expressed in terms which in time cease to have vital significance for the advancing life and thought of humanity. The divergence in the life of the "man in the street" between what he really knows and believes, and what he is supposed or expected to believe by accredited or official teachers of the faith, is largely the result of the mistaken theory and misguided practice of "religious education." Religious education is the last kind of education to be touched by the breath of the modern spirit. Apart from that devotional drill which is fertilising or sterilising, according to the spirit and method of the devotion, what is known as religious education has only two sides-religious history and geography, and religious doctrine. In respect to both of these, there is in the nature of the case, no free discussion or criticism. The attitude of the teacher is almost entirely authoritative and dogmatic; the attitude of the taught is, or is expected to be, almost wholly passive and receptive. The result is what might have been anticipated, that men soon discover that what they had been taught to regard as unquestionable facts and indisputable truths are both questioned and disputed. They are in a parlous case, for they had come (without much reflection on the matter) to identify religion, or, at any rate, their religion, with the facts and doctrines aforesaid. Most of them adopt one of two alternatives. Either they become more or less antagonistic to religion in theory, and more or less indifferent to it in practice, or they shut off their minds from any further activity on the subject, and are content to

live in two universes. This latter alternative gives rise to mental and moral discomfort, only on the rare occasions when the two universes seem to come into contact or conflict with each other. Clerical authorities lament that the modern woman is following the example of the modern man, and finding a fuller scope for her intellectual and moral activities in secular and non-sectarian work, than in the round of church duties which had previously been found fully satisfying. Lastly, the youth of the church cannot help observing the very low level of their religious education and instruction, as compared with their education in other subjects, and come to regard it as negligible, if not contemptible.

It would be disastrous for the future of civilisation if the churches were to cease to play a part and a great part in the education of the human race. Despite their defects, they are spiritual agencies whose disappearance would inevitably bring about a lowering of the general level of public and private morality. Many of the members of the churches, both lay and clerical, are as fully aware of the defects as the most bitter of their critics. Only an acrid unsympathetic criticism would forget the manifold services of the churches in the past, or deny the need of them at the present time. Recent events have shown how thin is the veneer of modern "culture" and how easily civilised man can revert to the vices of savagery. The churches with all their faults have justified their claim to be the guardians of those supreme spiritual values which are revealed in the deepest, most mysterious experiences of the human soul, fighting with fate and circumstance, battling with devils or wrestling with angels. They may have sometimes confused the treasure with the earthen vessels which contained it, but they have not been wholly unfaithful to their They have preserved and transmitted to succeeding generations of men, the greatest treasure of humanity, faith in the world of unseen realities, and in the constant presence of the Divine Spirit.

The faith of a church, like the faith of a nation, is tested in a crisis, first by the way in which it meets the crisis, and lives through it, and next by the way in which it lives after the crisis is over. Every nation which has gone through a crisis in its history comes out of it worse or better, strengthened or weakened, purified or coarsened. There is no such thing as "marking time" when spiritual destinies are concerned. You are either on the up grade or on the down grade. It may take some time to discover whether a man, a nation, or an institution is on the up grade or on the down grade. When the crisis is a great one, there are after-effects and by-products