He speaks of "the intense honesty of the man, _who never
shirks a difficulty or writes an insincere word_."
But though he is associated in the popular mind chiefly with modernism,
Dr. Inge is not by any means only a controversial theologian. Above and
beyond everything else, he is a mystic. You may find indications of this
truth even in a book like _Outspoken Essays_, but they are more numerous
in his two little volumes, _The Church and the Age_ and _Speculum
Animae_, and of course more numerous still in his great work on
Plotinus[5]. He is far more a mystic than a modernist. Indeed I regard
him as the Erasmus of modernism, one so sure of truth that he would
trust time to work for his ideas, would avoid fighting altogether, but
certainly all fighting that is in the least degree premature. The two
thousand years of Christianity, he says somewhere, are no long period
when we remind ourselves that God spent millions of years in moulding a
bit of old red sandstone.
[Footnote 5: "I have often thought that the unquestionable inferiority
of German literature about Platonism points to an inherent defect in the
German mind."--_The Philosophy of Plotinus_, p. 13]
Meanwhile we have our cocksure little guides, some of whom say to
us, "That is primitive, therefore it is good," and others, "This is
up-to-date, therefore it is better." Not very wise persons any of
them, I fear.
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