t 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.

He makes me feel that his modernism, if I may presume to use that term,
is an evangelical desire of his soul to give men this intellectual
background to their faith. He wants, as it were, to save their beliefs
rather than their souls. He regards the emotionalist as occupying
territory as dangerous to himself and to the victory of Christianity as
the territory occupied by the traditionalist. Both schools offend the
mind of rational men; both make Christianity seem merely an affair of
temperament; and both are exposed to the danger of losing their faith.

To convert the world to the Will of God, it is essential that the
Christian should have a rational explanation of his faith, a faith
which, resting only on tradition or emotion, must obviously take its
place among all the other competing religions of mankind, a religion
possessing no authority recognised by the modern world.

The modern world rightly asks of every opinion and idea presented to its
judgment, "Is it true?" and it has reason on its side in being sceptical
concerning the records of the past. If not, there are religions in the
world of an antiquity greater than Christianity's, whose traditions have
been faithfully kept by a vaster host of the human race than has ever
followed the traditions of Christianity. Is it to be a battle between
tradition and tradition? Is age to be a test of truth? Is devotion to a
formula to count as an argument?

The emotionalist, too, is no longer on safe ground in protesting his
miracles of conversion. The psychologist is advancing towards that
ground, and advancing with every theory of supernatural evidence
excluded from his mind. The psychologist may eventually be driven to
accept the Christian explanation of these phenom