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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.
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