190 



AETHUR GALTON, ON 



honest. Truth and scholarship will always find their level if 

 they be unimpeded. Error will inevitably be detected and 

 exposed, when i.here is freedom of research and of speech. 

 These have been, hitherto, our English metliods ; and we should 

 have no sympathy with those who violate them systematically, 

 flagrantly, cynically, especially by misusing the press to deceive 

 the people, and to undermine those liberties of which it should be 

 a strenuous guardian. 



Now it may be asked, What is the present position of 

 modernism, and what are its prospects ? 



Eirst, there has been no general movement ; but it must not 

 be supposed that modernism is dead. It has not been killed 

 by Pius X. I have explained that the State remained neutral, 

 and gave no encouragement to ecclesiastical secessions. Indeed, 

 by its financial arrangements, it went beyond a strict neutrality, 

 and made any liberating process difficult. And the leading 

 modernists do not want to move. Some of them have, indeed, 

 and against their wishes, been moved out, but not one of them 

 has been an aggressor. They do not wish to establish new 

 organisations, adding one or more to the too numerous Christian 

 factions. They also recognise the difiiculty, or even the 

 impossibility, of organising new churches, on theological and 

 ecclesiastical bases, after the manner of the sixteenth century. 

 The day for such enterprises and institutions is manifestly over. 

 What the modernists aim at and hope for is to leaven the 

 existing organisation ; preserving, if they can, its international 

 character, and its priceless heritage of unity and long tradition. 

 They do not see why an organisation which might be utilised 

 for good, which for a long time will certainly be capable of 

 mischief , should be surrendered without a blow to obscurantists, 

 and fanatics, and autocrats. Only the future will })rove 

 whether these hopes can be fulfilled. 



In France, then, on the surface, the modernists are vanquished, 

 silenced, excommunicated, solitary ; but, below the surface, 

 modernism is fermenting and spreading. It cannot be excluded, 

 even from the schools and seminaries, unless catholics can be 

 debarred from education, and isolated from social intercourse. 

 The two main difficulties of the French bishops at present are 

 the want of men, and the want of money. Men are wanting, 

 partly because there are not funds enough to educate them ; 

 but also because the ecclesiastical career is unpromising 

 financially, and even more unpromising intellectually, l^oth in 

 quality and in quantity, the supply of priests will diminish 

 under the existing conditions. The church will die of 



