nceived in terms not of the
known but of the unknown. If the Christian Church is to meet the
challenge of the cults with a far more clearly defined line of teaching,
it is also to meet the challenge of the cults with a warmer religious
life, with the affirmation of an experience not so much tested by crises
and conversions as by the constant living of life in the sense of the
divine--to use Jeremy Taylor's noble phrase: in the Practice of the
Presence of God. The weakness of the cults is to have narrowed the
practice of the presence of God to specific regions, finding the proof
of His power in health and well-being. If we can substitute therefor the
consciousness of God in the sweep of law, the immensity of force, the
normal conduct of life, in light and understanding, in reason as well as
mysticism and science as well as devotion, we shall have secured a
foundation upon which to build amply enough to shelter devout and
questing souls not now able to find what they seek in the churches
themselves and yet never for a moment out of line with what is truest
and most prophetic in Christianity itself.

Sir Henry Jones has a paragraph in his "Faith that Enquires" distinctly
to the point just here. "The second consideration arises from the
greatness of the change that would follow were the Protestant Churches
and their leaders to assume the attitude of the sciences and treat the
articles of the creeds not as dogmas but as the most probable
explanation, the most sane account which they can form of the relation
of man to the Universe and of the final meaning of his life. The
hypothesis of a God whose wisdom and power and goodness are perfect
would then be tried and tested, both theoretically and practically, and,
I believe, become thereby ever the more convincing. The creed would be
not merely a record of an old belief to be accepted on authority, but a
challenge to the skeptic and the irreligious. The Church, instead of
being a place where the deliverances of ancient religious authorities
are expounded, and illustrated by reference to the contents of one book
and the history of one nation--as if no other books were inspired and
all nations save one were God-abandoned--the Church would be the place
where the validity of spiritual convictions are discussed on their
merits, and the application of spiritual principles extended; where
enquiring youths would repair when life brings them sorrow,
disappointment or failure, and the inju