RIGHT RELATION OF REASON TO RELIGION 229 



No, we shall labour under a really injurious mis- 

 conception if we pursue our discussion in the persua- 

 sion that Rationalism means hostility to genuine and 

 fulfilled Christianity. Much less is it to be supposed 

 that the chief object of assault in attacking the 

 Method of Authority is the great church of Rome. 

 Rome simply shares the attack with that Protestant- 

 ism, self-styled Catholic or Evangelical, which, like 

 Rome, founds religious life and religious doctrine on 

 authority. Moreover, let it be insistently borne in 

 mind that neither Romanism nor Protestantism is as- 

 sailed by Rationalism in so far as either is Christian, 

 as both, in the centre of their quickening spirit, indeed 

 are. But both are criticised by the growing rational 

 spirit of mankind, and criticised not in bitterness, but 

 in all tolerant though unyielding sobriety, in so far as 

 they have received into Christianity, and have per- 

 sisted in maintaining there, the Method of Declara- 

 tive Authority ; a method long antedating Christen- 

 dom, and really surviving in it from the primeval 

 religions and the great organised religions of the 

 Orient and the pagan West ; a method contradictory 

 of the genius of Christianity. 



Let us realise clearly, then, that while the most 

 pertinent bearing of our discussion, and its greatest 

 weight of meaning, must doubtless be with refer- 

 ence to the developments of the Method of Author- 

 ity in the history of Christianity, we shall have a 



