Always he is calling upon men to drop their prejudices and catchwords,
to forsake their conceits and sentiments, to face Truth with a quiet
pulse and eyes clear of all passion. Christianity is a tremendous thing;
let no man, believer or unbeliever, attempt to make light of it.
It is not compassion for the intellectual difficulties of the average
man which has made Dr. Inge a conservative modernist, if so I may call
him. Sentiment of no kind whatever has entered into the matter. He is a
conservative modernist because his reason has convinced him of the truth
of reasonable modernism, because he has "that intellectual honesty which
dreads what Plato calls 'the lie in the soul' even more than the lie on
the lips." He is a modernist because he is an intellectual ascetic.
When we compare his position with that of Dr. Gore we see at once the
width of the gulf which separates the traditionalist from the
philosopher. To Dr. Gore the creeds and the miracles are essential to
Christianity. No Virgin Birth, no Sermon on the Mount! No Resurrection
of the Body, no Parable of the Prodigal Son! No Descent into Hell, no
revelation that the Kingdom of Heaven is within! Need we wonder that Dr.
Gore cries out despairingly for more discipline? He summons reason, it
is true, but to defend and explain creeds without which there is no
Christianity.
To Dr. Inge, on the other hand, it is what Christ said that matters,
what He taught that demands our obedience, what He revealed that
commands our love.
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