ft of the
stately theology reared by Church Fathers, councils and scholastics?
Apparently only a mellowed religion with a universalistic outlook and a
strong ethical trend. This mellowness and this universalism were not
qualities present in perfection from the start, although we cannot say
that Christianity was antagonistic to them. Mellowness takes time. I
cannot but feel that men like St. Francis, Pascal, Bossuet, Fenelon,
Melancthon, Wesley, on the ecclesiastical side, and men like Plato,
Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Fichte, Darwin, and Mazzini, on the laic
side, have contributed to this mellowness. From this point of view, we
can best describe modern Christianity as an evolution of Hebrew ethical
monotheism along tenderer and more human lines under the stimulus of
many very noble personalities.

During the latter half of the nineteenth century, Christianity passed
through a fire of criticism which rocked it to its foundation. To
those who lived at that time, the transition from the older, and more
dogmatic, form was accompanied by spiritual and moral struggles which
seem to us exaggerated. The very indifference of the present age shows
that the atmosphere has cleared and that new values have come to the
front. A short while since, I picked up Hutton's once famous book,
_Modern Guides of English Thought in Matters of Faith_, and read his
analysis of the life of Cardinal Newman and his interesting criticism
of Matthew Arnold. I must confess that the time-spirit of which Arnold
{96} made so much has done its work. The scene is shifting from a
religion which stresses a peculiar form of salvation and a career in
another world to social and economic conditions and ideals. Is there
not something Byronic in much of Arnold's religious poetry? Is there
not too much of the pageant of the bleeding heart in his sighs of
regret and farewell? Yet he realized that the old faith was dying and
that man had not yet found that which could fill its place. It takes
time to make an adjustment in these matters, just as it is time alone
that softens the griefs of unrequited love or the loss of dear ones.
And it is usually only the next generation, which has been able to make
a genuinely fresh start, that settles into a new way of life.

Change is a great physician because it is able to introduce new factors
into the situation, and it has been at work since Arnold's day. There
are, nevertheless, prophecies in his poems of anoth