leave the Church or they must keep still about it, and remain in an
attitude of appearing to believe what they really do not believe. Or
else they must do violence to the creed, reinterpreting it in such a
way as to make it to them what the framers of it had never dreamed of.

Do you not see the danger that there is here of a person's disingenuous
attitude towards the truth, danger to the moral fibre, danger to the
progress of man? Take as a hint of it the way the Bible has been
treated. People have said that the Bible was absolutely infallible:
they have taken that as a foregone conclusion; and then, when they
found out beyond question that the world was not created in six days,
what have they done? Frankly accepted the truth? No, they have tried to
twist the Bible into meaning something different from what it plainly
says. It expressly says days, bounded by morning and evening; but no,
it must mean long periods of time. Why? Because science and the Bible
must somehow be reconciled, no matter if the Bible is wrenched and
twisted from its real meaning.

And so with regard to the creeds. The creeds say that Christ descended
into hell; that is, the underworld. People come to know that there is
no underworld; and, instead of frankly admitting that that statement in
the creed is not correct, they must torture it out of its meaning, and
make it stand for something that the framers of it had never heard of.
I think it would greatly astonish the writers of the Bible and the
Church Fathers if they could wake up to-day, and find out that they
meant something when they wrote those things which had never occurred
to them at the time.

Is this quite honest? Is it wise for us to put ourselves in this
attitude?