The critics of modernism do not seem able, for some reason, to grasp a truth which has been apparent all down the ages, a truth so old that it is almost entitled to be regarded as a tradition, and so widely held that it is almost worthy to be called catholic, namely, the truth that Jesus loses none of His power over human history so long as He abides a living principle in the hearts of individual men.  So long as He expresses for mankind the Character of God and reveals to mankind the nature of God’s purpose, so long as men love Him as they love no other, and set themselves to make His spirit tell, first in their lives and after that in the world about them, does it greatly matter whether they speak of His divinity or His uniqueness, whether they accept definitions concerning Him (framed by men in the dark ages) or go about to do His will with no definitions in their mind at all beyond the intellectual conviction that here is One who spoke as no other man has spoken since the creation of the world?

Canon Barnes, who disowns the name of modernist, but who is the very opposite of an obscurantist in his evangelicalism, is careful to insist upon a rational loyalty to Christ.  I tried one day to tempt him on this head, speaking of the miraculous changes wrought in men’s lives by religious fervour pure and simple; but it was in vain.  He agrees that religious fervour may work such miracles:  he is the last man in the world to dismiss these miracles as curious and interesting phenomena of psychology; but he insists, and is like a rock on this matter, that emotional Christianity is not safe without an intellectual background.

He makes me feel that his modernism, if I may presume to use that term, is an evangelical desire of his soul to give men this intellectual background to their faith.  He wants, as it were, to save their beliefs rather than their souls.  He regards the emotionalist as occupying territory as dangerous to himself and to the victory of Christianity as the territory occupied by the traditionalist.  Both schools offend the mind of rational men; both make Christianity seem merely an affair of temperament; and both are exposed to the danger of losing their faith.

To convert the world to the Will of God, it is essential that the Christian should have a rational explanation of his faith, a faith which, resting only on tradition or emotion, must obviously take its place among all the other competing religions of mankind, a religion possessing no authority recognised by the modern world.

The modern world rightly asks of every opinion and idea presented to its judgment, “Is it true?” and it has reason on its side in being sceptical concerning the records of the past.  If not, there are religions in the world of an antiquity greater than Christianity’s, whose traditions have been faithfully kept by a vaster host of the human race than has ever followed the traditions of Christianity.  Is it to be a battle between tradition and tradition?  Is age to be a test of truth?  Is devotion to a formula to count as an argument?