58 THE EE V. CANON E. MCCLUEE, M.A.. M.E.I. A.. ON 



Grounds of the Modernist View. 



This is a startlingly novel presentation of the Gospels., and 

 one naturally asks for the grounds upon which it is based. 



The attitude of Modernists of the French school to the 

 traditional presentation of Christianity depends on complicated 

 causes, but chief among these is a conviction that an accommo- 

 dation of the Christian Creeds to the critical views of intelligent 

 men is absolutely essential. Scholarship, they contend, has 

 given us the real Gospel — which differs much from the 

 traditional — and enables us to construct afresh the true portrait 

 of the Central Figure. If the Christian religion is to meet the 

 needs of the present age, it must, they urge, be rebuilt upon 

 this new base. They do not deny, but rather maintain, that 

 the Roman Church of to-day is a natural evolution of the 

 traditional New Testament. The base it is which is faulty, and 

 the whole structure must be rebuilt. We see at the moment 

 how the process of laying new foundations and making a new 

 structure has fared at the hands of one of the leaders in the 

 Modernist movement. 



M. Loisy has given us lately a species of autobiography under 

 the title of Ch>. Passes, that is. we may roughly translate it, 

 "Things Outlived." He had ministered at the altar of his Church 

 until November, 1906, and even then, when the authorities had 

 prohibited him from saying Mass, all he could say was that 

 " This act had not lost for me all religious significance." He 

 had given up, as he tells us, not only the faith of Ms childhood, 

 but he no longer accepted any article of the Creed in any 

 ordinary sense, unless the clause " Suffered under Pontius 

 Pilate ! " With this small residuum of the traditional creed he 

 had still, before his excommunication, strange to say, faith in 

 Christianity, that is, his concept of it, as a tremendous force in 

 the world ; and even towards the end of his ecclesiastical career 

 consented to a proposal made to Eome by the Prince of Monaco, 

 that he should be appointed Bishop of Monte Carlo ! In 1908 

 he was excommunicated. Was it any wonder ] 



Tyrrell's Views. 



It was not long before the Modernist movement had found 

 representatives in this country. Among these the late Father 

 George Tyrrell stood out pre-eminent. 



Tyrrell was born of Protestant parents at Dublin, in 1861. 

 He has given us a short autobiography which has been admirably 



