MOD K UN ISM AND TRADITIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



H9 



years, but it is an effective one, and should be still further 

 developed. 



The Ven. Archdeacon Beresford Totter had listened to the 

 paper with much pleasure ; it was very gratifying that one who, 

 from his official position as Secretary of a Society, might be 

 expected to write more or less " to order," should impress his 

 readers, as did Canon McClure, so strongly with his absolute 

 fairness and desire for the truth. 



If we referred back to our Lord's time, we saw how He con- 

 demned the Jewish teachers of His day, who had degraded Judaism, 

 and how He sought to recall His hearers to the great spiritual 

 truths underlying Judaism. Is it impossible that Christianity may 

 have suffered some degradation, some lowering of spiritual vitality, 

 during the long centuries of its existence, and that we, like the 

 Jews, may need to be recalled to a more spiritual attitude 1 



The speaker thought that the Church owed something to the 

 Modernist thinkers, though, in the swing of the pendulum, one 

 might naturally expect that mistakes would arise. We could not 

 accept Loisy's teaching, nor all that Father Tyrrell wrote ; yet 

 Tyrrell's view that the test of spiritual truth was its effect in 

 uplifting the spiritual life of man was one with which he entirely 

 agreed. He had lately bad the pleasure of a conversation with 

 Mr. Thompson, and was entirely assured as to his religious spirit 

 and fairness of mind ; at the same time he could not admit that 

 there was any consistency between his denial of miracle and his 

 strong belief in the Incarnation. 



The Chairman read a note from Sir Robert Anderson in 

 which he expressed his sense of distress and pain that 

 Canon McClure's paper ended by offering no alternative to 

 Modernism save " traditional Christianity." " Tradition " had sup- 

 plied the platform from whence rationalism had launched its attacks 

 upon Holy Scripture and on the faith of Christ ; our only sure 

 refuge was " God and the Word of His Grace." 



The Chairman remarked that he felt sure Sir Robert had 

 misunderstood Canon McClure's use of the w r ord " traditional." 

 The lecturer was not referring to that which is often termed 

 " Tradition," but to primitive Christianity as contrasted with some 

 recent conceptions. For our knowledge of what Christianity is we 

 must fall back upon the Bible ; it stands upon no other rock than 



