t the views of rationalistic
historians is simply the fact that those views seem, in substance,
convincingly true; and what makes them wander into transcendental
speculations is the warmth of their souls, needing to express their
faith anew, and to follow their inmost inspiration, wherever it may
lead them. A scrupulous honesty in admitting the probable facts of
history, and a fresh upwelling of mystical experience, these are the
motives, creditable to any spiritual man, that have made modernists of
so many. But these excellent things appear in the modernists under
rather unfortunate circumstances. For the modernists to begin with are
Catholics, and usually priests; they are pledged to a fixed creed,
touching matters both of history and of philosophy; and it would be a
marvel if rationalistic criticism of the Bible and rationalistic
church history confirmed that creed on its historical side, or if
irresponsible personal speculations, in the manner of Ritschl or of M.
Bergson, confirmed its metaphysics.

I am far from wishing to suggest that an orthodox Christian cannot be
scrupulously honest in admitting the probable facts, or cannot have a
fresh spiritual experience, or frame an original philosophy. But what
we think probable hangs on our standard of probability and of
evidence; the spiritual experiences that come to us are according to
our disposition and affections; and any new philosophy we frame will
be an answer to the particular problems that beset us, and an
expression of the solutions we hope for. Now this standard of
probability, this disposition, and these problems and hopes may be
those of a Christian or they may not. The true Christian, for
instance, will begin by regarding miracles as probable; he will either
believe he has experienced them in his own person, or hope for them
earnestly; nothing will seem to him more natural, more in consonance
with the actual texture of life, than that they should have occurred
abundantly and continuously in the past. When he finds the record of
one he will not inquire, like the rationalist, how that false record
could have been concocted; but rather he will ask how the rationalist,
in spite of so many witnesses to the contrary, has acquired his fixed
assurance of the universality of the commonplace. An answer perhaps
could be offered of which the rationalist need not be ashamed. We
might say that faith in the universality of the commonplace (in its
origin, no doubt, simp