MODKKNISM AND T K A I > ITION A I, V H U I S II A MT V. 



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all history. W'c ought to exalt the Person of Christ : we ought to 

 proclaim the Words of Christ, and to maintain their paramount 

 claim on the obedience of all men. 



The Lecturer briefly acknowledged the vote of thanks, and 

 expressed his obligation to the Rev. M. Anstey for his criticism of 

 the won! " traditional " \ by that word he had wished to connote 

 " historical Christianity " — Christianity as based on the great 

 historical facts of our Lord's Birth, Life, Death and Resurrection. 



The meeting adjourned at 6.10 P.M. 



Written Communication. 



The Rev. Chancellor Lias writes : This war has given the coup 

 de grdce to, what I may venture to call, German sceptical criticism. 

 For more than a hundred years, from Eichhorn onwards, we have 

 had a succession of German critics whose aim has been to minimize 

 the credit of Holy Scripture, and to such a height had the tyranny 

 of Germanism in this country grown that an article for a paper 

 would be refused, a book would be received slightingly or ignored, if it 

 did not conform to the Germanic fashion. Yet there were those of us 

 who saw that this Germanized criticism was not what it professed 

 to be, — scientific ; it rested upon assertion, not upon facts or first 

 principles. And we foresaw that either a reaction must come or this 

 country cease to be Christian, for the Christian religion could not 

 stand upon such foundations as those that were left to it. What 

 none of us dared to foresee was the appalling object-lesson which this 

 war presents us of a country which has abandoned Christianity and 

 Christ, has not only rejected Jehovah, but gone back to Odin, and 

 has set up a morality worse than any ever seen before, a morality 

 resting avowedly on force alone. 



I proceed to a few brief and disconnected remarks on the paper. 

 Newman's theory of development is stated on p. 62 ; whether this 

 development be true or false did not seem to matter in Cardinal 

 Newman's estimation, for he considered that it took place according 

 to men's ideas of "congruity," "desirability," or "decorum"; it 

 was therefore neither logical nor scientific, and depended entirely on 

 " the taste and fancy " of the developer. 



