Yet the intellectual crisis cannot be ignored in the interest of the practical life. Men must rationalize the universe. On the one hand there are churchmen who attempt to repeat the historical process which has naturalized the Church in alien soils by appropriating the forces of the new environment, and who hold that the entire process is inspired and guided by the spirit of God. Hence Christianity is the absolute religion, because it does not preclude development but necessitates it, so that the Christianity that is to come shall not only retain all that is important in the Christianity of the past and present but shall assimilate new truth. On the other hand some seek the essential Christianity in a life beneath and separable from the historic forms. In part under the influence of the Hegelian philosophy, and in part because of the prevalent evolutionary scientific world-view, God is represented under the form of pure thought, and the world process as the unfolding of himself. Such truth can be apprehended by the multitude only in symbols which guide the will through the imagination, and through historic facts which are embodiment of ideas. The Trinity is the essential Christian doctrine, the historic facts of the Christian religion being the embodiment of religious ideas. The chief critical difficulty felt by this school is in identifying any concrete historic fact with the unchanging idea, that is, in making Jesus of Nazareth the incarnation of God. God is reinterpreted, and in place of an extra-mundane creator is an omnipresent life and power. The Christian attainment is nothing else than the thorough intellectual grasp of the absolute idea and the identification of our essential selves with God. With a less thorough-going intellectualism other scholars reinterpret Christianity in terms of current scientific phraseology. Christianity is dependent upon the understanding of the universe; hence it is the duty of believers to put it into the new setting, so that it adopts and adapts astronomy, geology, biology and psychology. With this accomplished, Christianity will resume its ancient place. Consciously and of purpose the attempt is made to do once more what has been done repeatedly before, to restate Christianity in the terms of current science.