nt to its logical conclusions with startling
ruthlessness. And then, when the whole edifice of historical religion
seems to have been overthrown to the very foundations, they turn round
suddenly and say that all their critical labours mean nothing for faith,
and that we may go on repeating the old formulas as if nothing had
happened. The Modernists pour scorn on the scholastic
'faculty-psychology,' which resolves human personality into a syndicate
of partially independent agents; but, in truth, their attempt to blow
hot and cold with the same mouth seems to have involved them in a more
disastrous self-disruption than has been witnessed in the history of
thought since the fall of the Nominalists. In a sceptical and
disillusioned age their disparagement of 'intellectualism' or rather of
discursive thought in all its operations, might find a response. But in
the twentieth century the science which, as critics, they follow so
unswervingly will not submit to be bowed out of the room as soon as
matters of faith come into question. Our contemporaries believe that
matters of fact are important, and they insist, with ever-increasing
emphasis, that they shall not be called upon to believe, as part of
their religious faith, anything which as a matter of fact, is not true.
The Modernist critic, when pressed on this side, says that it is natural
for faith to represent its ideas in the form of historical facts, and
that it is this inevitable tendency which causes the difficulties
between religion and science. A sane criticism will allow that this is
very largely true, but will not, we are convinced, be constrained to
believe with M. Loisy that the historical original of the Christian
Redeemer was the poor deluded enthusiast whom he portrays in 'Les
Evangiles Synoptiques.'

However this may be--and it must remain a matter of opinion--the very
serious question arises, whether it is really natural for faith to
represent its ideas in the form of historical facts when it knows that
these facts have no historical basis. The writers with whom we are
dealing evidently think it is natural and inevitable, and we must assume
that they speak from their own spiritual experience. But this state of
mind does not seem to be a very common one. Those who believe in the
divinity of Christ, but not in His supernatural birth and bodily
resurrection, do not, as a rule, make those miracles the subject of
their meditations, but find their spiritual sustenan