harisaism.

You may see the intellectual charity of the man in his attitude towards
other teachers of our time whose views are opposed to his own. Of Dean
Inge he has spoken to me with almost a ringing enthusiasm, emphasizing
his unbounded force, his unbounded courage; and of Bishop Gore with the
deepest respect, paying reverent tribute to his spiritual earnestness;
even the Bishop of Zanzibar provokes only a smile of the most cheerful
good humour.

He inclines quietly towards optimism, believing in the providence of God
and thinking that the recent indifference to religion is passing away.
Men are now seeking, and to seek is eventually to find. This seeking, he
observes, is among the latest utterances of theology, a fact of
considerable importance. To keep abreast of truth one must neither go
back nor stand still. Men are now not so much swallowing great names as
looking for a candle.

Not long ago he paid a visit to a favourite bookshop of his in
Cambridge, and inquired for second-hand volumes of theology. "I have
nothing here," replied the bookseller, "that would interest you. The
books you would like go out the day after they come in, sometimes the
same day." Then pointing to the upper shelves, "But I've plenty of the
older books"; and there in the dust and neglect of the top shelves Canon
Barnes surveyed the works of grave and portentous theologians who wrote,
some before the days of Darwin, and some in the first heyday of
Darwinism. He said to me, "Lightfoot is still consulted, but even
Westcott is now neglected."

He spoke of two difficulties for the Church. One is this: her supreme
need at the present time is men for the ministry, the best kind of men,
more men and much better men, men of learning and character, able to
teach with persuasive authority. It is not the voice of atheism we hear;
it is the voice of the Church that we miss. But, as Bishop Gore claims,
most of the theological colleges are in the hands of the
traditionalists, and the tendency of these colleges is to turn out
priests rather than teachers, formalists rather than evangelists. Such
colleges as represent the evangelical movement are, thanks to their
title deeds, largely in the hands of pious laymen not very well
educated, who adhere rigidly to a school of thought which is associated
in the modern mind with an extreme of narrowness. Thus it comes about
that many men who might serve the Church with great power are driven
away at her doors