way do they realise the
nature of the statements to which they subscribe. They will speak
and think of both Christ and God in ways flatly incompatible with the
doctrine of the Triune deity upon which, theoretically, the entire
fabric of all the churches rests. They will show themselves as frankly
Arians as though that damnable heresy had not been washed out of the
world forever after centuries of persecution in torrents of blood. But
whatever the present state of Christendom in these matters may be,
there can be no doubt of the enormous pains taken in the past to give
Christian beliefs the exactest, least ambiguous statement possible.
Christianity knew itself clearly for what it was in its maturity,
whatever the indecisions of its childhood or the confusions of its
decay. The renascent religion that one finds now, a thing active and
sufficient in many minds, has still scarcely come to self-consciousness.
But it is so coming, and this present book is very largely an attempt
to state the shape it is assuming and to compare it with the beliefs
and imperatives and usages of the various Christian, pseudo-Christian,
philosophical, and agnostic cults amidst which it has appeared.

The writer's sympathies and convictions are entirely with this that he
speaks of as renascent or modern religion; he is neither atheist
nor Buddhist nor Mohammedan nor Christian. He will make no pretence,
therefore, to impartiality and detachment. He will do his best to be as
fair as possible and as candid as possible, but the reader must reckon
with this bias. He has found this faith growing up in himself; he has
found it, or something very difficult to distinguish from it, growing
independently in the minds of men and women he has met. They have been
people of very various origins; English, Americans, Bengalis, Russians,
French, people brought up in a "Catholic atmosphere," Positivists,
Baptists, Sikhs, Mohammedans. Their diversity of source is as remarkable
as their convergence of tendency. A miscellany of minds thinking upon
parallel lines has come out to the same light. The new teaching is also
traceable in many professedly Christian religious books and it is to be
heard from Christian pulpits. The phase of definition is manifestly at
hand.

2. MODERN RELIGION HAS A FINITE GOD

Perhaps the most fundamental difference between this new faith and any
recognised form of Christianity is that, knowingly or unknowingly, it
worships A FINITE GO