to be faced by Liberal Churchmen. To consistent Catholics such as Father
Knox it is not, I suppose, a problem at all. He would say that such men
deserve every adjective of approbation in the dictionary; but they are
not Christian. If Christianity means a fixed set of opinions, "a faith
once delivered to the saints," Father Knox is right; such men are not
Christians, but, if so, the fact that they are not is the death warrant
of the Church, for they represent progress to a higher type than that of
the Christianity of the past.

But the liberal Christian does not accept the view that the Church ought
to exist for the preservation of traditional opinions. In his heart he
feels that such men would have been accepted by Jesus as his disciples,
and therefore he believes that the Church can and ought to be reformed
so as to make room for them. For this Reformation he has no fixed and
rigid programme, but there are three things which he thinks the Church
must provide.

The first necessity is the right understanding of life. It cannot be
given by any theory of the universe which, like the biblical one, is in
glaring contradiction to the facts of modern science[1]. Nor is it
conceivable that belief can be fixed so as to be unalterable.
Intellectual correctness is relative, and Truth cannot be petrified into
Creeds, but lives by discussion, criticism, correction, and growth.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Bryan is right in maintaining that evolution and the
whole scientific concept of life is unbiblical, though wrong in thinking
that that settles the question.]

The second necessity is the purification of the human spirit. Generation
after generation of Christians on their way through the world have