90 THE REV. CANON E. MCCTXRE. M.A., M.E.I. A.. ON 



that of Holy Scripture. Many people were unaware how full and 

 complete was the testimony of the early Church to the Bible — to 

 quote the Epistle to the Hebrews, £; we also are compassed about with 

 so great a cloud of witnesses/' Traditional Christianity, that is 

 to say Christianity as derived from the mere traditions of men, had 

 done immense harm by preparing the way for " Modernism " ; 

 belief had been asked for a vast mass of quite unhistorical events, 

 and these fictions had clouded men's faith in the great historical 

 facts of the life of Christ. There was only one way by which 

 to escape from these entanglements : let us go back to Holy 

 Scripture. 



He greatly admired Canon McClure's patience in his study of 

 these products of German philosophy. After all, there was nothing 

 specially modern about them : they were simply revivals of ancient 

 Gnosticism, and were unspeakably dreary and monotonous. More 

 than sixty years ago the late Dean Mansel had them exposed, and 

 had shown that the Modernists had not advanced at all beyond 

 their predecessors. All the Modernist arguments and theories were 

 hopelessly deficient in one essential particular : they had no answer 

 to the question, how we may be saved from our sins. 



He wished that we could get rid of abstract terms. It was 

 not with Christianity that we were concerned, but with Christ. 

 As long as we fixed our gaze on that Divine Figure, these specula- 

 tions vanished. 



The reason why Modernism had made less progress in this country 

 than on the Continent was no doubt that our people knew the Bible. 

 There was one thing for which this nation was deeply indebted to 

 the English Church. From the Eeformation onward, it had been 

 the rule that the Bible should be systematically read aloud in 

 Church in the common tongue everv Sunday. The value of this 

 might be learnt from one illustration. Kenan, in his Vie de Jesus, 

 characterised the discourses of the Lord which are recorded 

 in the fourteenth and three following chapters of St. John's 

 Gospel as arid and metaphysical. Everyone who had read those 

 chapters with the slightest spiritual apprehension knew that that 

 was simply nonsense. There were no parts of Holy Scripture that 

 were so full of life and comfort to all. We Christians were far too 

 timid : we stood on the defensive and were apologetic, when we 

 should be boldly asserting and insisting upon the greatest facts in 



