Excerpt from On a Foundation for Religion
There are some of us at the present time who can no longer assent to many of the intellectual positions of Christianity. We do not so much attack as feel ourselves unable to occupy or defend them. We have little sympathy with a belligerent infidelity or a dogmatic atheism, but rather a natural reverence for what the world has counted holy; and in many Christian doctrines we find not a little to sympathize with and respect. Our inability, however, extends far. We are children of this world and of this age. While not seeking for imperfections and errors in Scripture or the teachings of the Church, historical criticism will not allow us to deny their existence; and, regarding Scripture and Church as human products, we cannot, though finding in them much that is true and helpful, look to them as authorities and rest upon them, least of all in matters of involved theological and philosophical speculation. Modern science has, moreover, given us a new view of the constitution of things. The common Christian conception has been that the world, in the entire circle of its phenomena and forces, is created and dependent; the order and adaptations of means to ends that we witness are due to the ordering and designing intelligence of the Creator; and duty has its sanction as being a revelation and command of His will. But science makes us think of the world in and of itself as a whole. It docs not so much deny the existence of God as find him, in the above-mentioned sense, unnecessary.
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