of the individual, is it not probably also true in the history
of the Church? And if it is true in the history of the Church, are not
the dogmatists wrong who have tried to legislate not only for the
present but the future, and to bind the Church for all time to the
formulations which appeared satisfactory to themselves? If Providence is
leading the Church through varied experiences in order to teach it
greater wisdom, is it not clear that we must not rashly preclude the
possibility of future revelation by stereotyping the results of some
earlier stage of experience? Thus the empiricism of Newman leads
logically to consequences which he would have been among the first to
reject.

Some rather shallow thinkers in this country have expressed their
surprise and regret that the Vatican has refused to make any terms with
Modernism. They have supposed that the fault lies with an ignorant and
reactionary Pope. But there are many reasons why this dangerous and
disintegrating tendency must be rigorously excluded from Roman
Catholicism. In the first place, Modernism destroys the historical basis
of Christianity, and converts the Incarnation and Atonement into myths
like those of other dying and rising saviour-gods, which hardly pretend
to be historical. But it was this foundation in history which helped
largely to secure the triumph of Christianity over its rivals. In the
place of the historical God-Man, Modernism gives us the history of the
Church as an object of reverence. We are bidden to contemplate an
institution of amazingly tough vitality but great adaptability, which in
its determination to survive has not only changed colour like a
chameleon but has from time to time put forth new organs and discovered
new weapons of offence and defence. We ask for evidence that the Church
has regenerated the world; and we are shown how, by hook or by crook, it
has succeeded in safeguarding its own interests. Ecclesiastical
historians are ingenious and unscrupulous; but it is impossible even for
them to exhibit Church history as the record of a continuous
intervention of the Spirit of Christ in human affairs. If any Spirit has
presided over the councils of popes, cardinals, and inquisitors it is
not that of the Founder of Christianity.

Further, the religious philosophy of Modernism is bad, much worse than
the scholasticism which it derides. It is in essentials a revival of the
sophistry of Protagoras. And if it were metaphysically more