GS 



THE REV. CAX0X E. McCLURE, M.A., M.R.I. A., OX 



happened in any religion." They are not communicated from 

 any external authority, but come from " God speaking from 

 within through the impulse of vital immanence and permanence'' 



The Church does not owe its existence to the immediate 

 institution of Jesus Christ, but is "the product of the collective 

 conscience (or consciousness)." 



According to this Xew Theology, " in a living religion every- 

 thing is subject to change — according to the law of evolution — 

 dogma, Church, sacred books, faith itself — the changes being 

 brought about, not by the accretion of new and purely adventi- 

 tious forms from without, but by an increasing penetration of 

 the religious sentiment into the conscience " under the stimulus 

 of new needs. 



Modernism in other Communions. 



The Modernist movement is not confined to the Roman 

 Church : indeed its principles had originally been derived from 

 non-Catholic communions. Traditional Christianity has had to 

 encounter rationalizing systems for ages. The feature which 

 distinguishes Modernism from previous rationalistic movements 

 is its intense conviction that religion has a olivine foundation 

 and that it is essential to human progress. But the religion to 

 which Modernism gives its support is something absolutely 

 different from traditional Christianity. Modernists of all com- 

 munions agree that it is necessary to establish a harmony 

 between the Christianity which has come down to them and 

 the knowledge which they have acquired from other sources. 

 Knowledge increases day by day, and there arises a natural 

 question in every thoughtful Christian mind as to how this know- 

 ledge will fall in with the religious system which had previously 

 become part of his mental life. Such minds feel it to be a kind 

 of dishonesty to maintain a belief in traditional Christianity 

 without taking into account what, on the face of it, seems 

 logically inconsistent with received views, and yet is generally 

 regarded as the assured results of human research. Intellectual 

 demands, they feel, must have full satisfaction, even at the 

 expense of religious exigencies, and they are quite prepared to 

 jettison from the ship of the Church all that intellectualism 

 regards as a danger to safe navigation 



Canon Streeter, for instance, in his Introduction to Foundations, 

 lays down this principle : " The world," he says, " is calling for 

 religion, but it cannot accept a religion if its theology is out of 

 harmony with science, philosophy, and scholarship. Religion 



