between right and wrong, and for the unsettled and weak convictions as to good and evil; and, furthermore, that it is accountable for much of the prevailing unbelief and skepticism, for, without some collateral and corroborative evidence to support naked affirmations, faith becomes weak, and lapses into superstitious credulity, or is abandoned for the more satisfactory—if not more intelligent—negations of infidelity and agnosticism. And it must be admitted that it has always been difficult to hold the average of Christians to an unfaltering faith in the evangelical doctrines of Christianity—the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the atonement, etc.—that but few have a clear conception of any of them, that many deny one or more of them, that no two understand them alike, and that all have doubts and fears with respect to them; and, therefore, the New Theology most earnestly protests against the arbitrary and inconsiderate church canon which exacts unreserved or even nominal assent to all or to any articles of faith as a requirement of God and a condition of the divine favor and the soul's salvation. It does not question the soundness of the doctrines affirmed, but it recognizes the impossibility of making all men see them alike, or of holding them to a credulous assent to them; and affirms that many who doubt and many who disbelieve them are among the most exemplary of mankind; that the sacred Scriptures comprehensively understood do not exact uniformity of faith in order to salvation; and that were any symbol the basis of hope it could not be of universal application, and would, therefore, not be adapted to humanity, or be consistent with either the divine or human nature. It assumes that saving faith is that recognition of what is right and best which enforces its practice; and the sincerity and strength of faith are determined by the degree of the conformity of the heart and life of the subject to the character and requirements of the ideal. In other words, the aim and effort of a man to be in accord with what he sincerely regards the true and the perfect, whether that be fetichism or Christianity, is the exercise of saving faith, and secures the soul its highest commendation and the divine favor; and, since its real excellence is in sincerity, it may be as perfect and as acceptable in its first timid appliance by the feeble as in its last bold assurance by the strong.
The New Theology is not a positive philosophy which rejects or agnosticizes the unknowable and the incomprehensible. It accepts authority as the starting-point of inquiry, which is skeptical but open to evidence, and takes the reasonable and the probable rather than the positive or the absolute as the only attainable presumption of truth and error. And since problematic conviction constitutes the sum of all human knowledge, and forms the basis of all human activity, it regards as impractical theorists, insensible to the operative agencies of the ages, all who reject the probable for the positive.
Starting out with these leading ideas that no creed can be final so
