$ 



MODERNISM : ITS ORIGIN AND TKNDENCIKS. 125 



conflict with the principles that religious body was formed to 

 maintain. But for my own part I l)elieve the estal)lishnient of 

 positions by critical analysis to be a task of extreme difficulty, 

 and also that it would be well for critics to be a little more modest 

 in representing their conclusions as irrefragable and final. I 

 would further observe that the modern critic is w^ont to establish 

 his case by ignoring all methods of investigation save his own, 

 and all considerations outside his particular methods wdiich 

 have led, or may lead, to a contrary conclusion. 



Such a method seems to me as unscientific as it would have 

 been for astronomers to have ignored the calculations of my 

 dear and honoured friend the late Professor Adams on the 

 perturbations of Uranus, and to have declared that there was 

 not, and could not be, any cause but the idiosyncrasy of Uranus 

 himself, for the eccentricities in his orbit. I shall return to 

 this f|uestion later on. But I may mention here that in the 

 article to wdiich I have alluded, Bishop Herzog — he was for 

 years Professor of N.T. Exegesis, I may say, in the University 

 of Bern — has once more re -stated the arguments against the 

 theory that St. ]\Iark is the oldest gospel, and has at least 

 shown that there is a good deal to be said on both sides of a 

 question which, as far as my experience goes — and I have been 

 reading both sides of it for more tlian half a century — is as 

 insoluble by purely critical methods as is the problem of 

 squaring the circle. 



The principles of modernism, I think, find tiieir most adequate 

 expression in Dr. Tyrrell's now^ famous " Letter." I shall take 

 this as my text-book, illustrating it, when necessary, from one 

 or two of his subsequent productions. That it is a formidable 

 attack on Romanism considered as a practical system, and that 

 it deserves the closest attention of those among us who have 

 been led to regard that system with deep admiration, few 

 will be found hardy enough to deny. Its admissions are 

 remarkable indeed. He acknowledges (pp. 48, 49) that " the 

 conservative positions " in that Church " are maintained by 

 ignorance, systematic or involuntary " ; that " the close historical 

 study of origins and developments must undermine many of our 

 {i.e., the Ultramontane) most fundamental assunq^tions in regard 

 to dogmas and institutions " ; that " the sphere of the miraculous 

 is daily limited by the growing difficulty in verifying such facts, 

 and the growing facility in reducing either them or the belief 

 in them to natural and recognized causes." He further grants 

 (p. 49) that " in the approved writings of her ascetical teachers 

 {i.e., those of the Church of Rome) and her moralists, in the 



