Another fatal mistake was made by the
Lambeth Conference, in its insistence on re-ordination. Imagine the
Church of England, with two Scotch Archbishops at its head, thinking
that the Presbyterians would consent to so humiliating a condition! An
interchange of pulpits is desirable; it might increase our intelligence,
or at least it should widen our sympathy. He holds a high opinion of the
Quakers. "Practical mystics: perhaps they are the best Christians, I
mean the best of them."
Modernism, he defines, at its simplest, as personal experience, in
contradistinction from authority. The modernist is one whose knowledge
of Christ is so personal and direct that it does not depend on miracle
or any accident of His earthly life. Rome, he thinks, is a falling
power, but she may get back some of her strength in any great industrial
calamity--a revolution, for example. Someone once asked him which he
would choose, a Black tyranny, or a Red? He replied "On the whole, I
think a Black." The friend corrected him. "You are wrong. Men would soon
emerge from the ruins of a Red tyranny, but Rome never lets go her power
till it is torn from her."
His contempt for the idea of reunion with Rome in her present condition
is unmeasured. "The notion almost reminds us of the cruel jest of
Mezentius, who bound the living bodies of his enemies to corpses." It is
the contempt both of a great scholar and a great Englishman for
ignorance and a somewhat ludicrous pretension.
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