liturgy. He has written a book on The Art of Public Worship, and he has published other things. Such an expression, "Lord, hear our prayer," he declares to be a meaningless archaism"-meaningless, because, I presume, the Lord need not be told to hear; and an archaism, out of use, because it is the style which Christianity and the religion of the Old Testament always used, and of course both are dead at the feet of Modernism. Upon such a phrase as "Remember," addressed to the Most High, this Rev. Doctor gives rein to his usual cynicism, and condemns it as "seeming to jog the memory of Omniscience.” You may remember what I quoted for you on a former occasion from a certain Dean, who denounced the repetition of prayers, and called it by implication a pagan exercise; for he quoted the old pagan, who used the term, "fatigare deos," and the Dean translated the Latin phrase into "pestering the gods," applying the term to the question of Christian prayer. With a funny cynicism of a similar kind, our Rev. Doctor, professor of Ecclesiastical Art, finds fault with the prayer, “Kyrie Eleison," because, says he, it was "originally used in pagan worship." He stops short in his argument, and does not carry it to its logical conclusion, that bread, meat, air, water, and a number of other things were used by pagans, and even in their worship, and therefore we should have nothing to do with them. But he also finds fault with "Kyrie Eleison," for the same inept reason as before, that God always has mercy, and therefore we should not ask Him. With his fine Christian sense he holds those words to be non-Christian because of such a theological implication.

But, in a moment of forgetfulness he relapses into a commonsense observation. He says of the word, "Remember," applied to God: "Such is the inade

quacy of human words to heavenly meanings! Perhaps the truth is that, when old prayers cannot be altered, they can be taken in a metaphorical sense, or at least as extremely natural cris du cœur." Precisely! Then what is the meaning of all this cynicism, and bitter humour at the Bible, which he professes to believe and teach as a Protestant minister? He makes the reason clear. The Decalogue is there; and many other things are in the Bible. He does not like them. He denounces the Decalogue as contrary to truth, but says he of his kind: "We clergy have ftom long mortifying custom lost our conscience in this matter." That is, they have been preaching purity, honesty, fidelity, sincerity, as prescribed by the Decalogue; and some of those things are neither to be alluded to nor observed.

CHAPTER XVIII

OUR LORD AND IMAGINATION

BENJAMIN. If imagination and its imagery is to interpret truth, I do not see how any unity can be assured to truth, when it is so diversely interpreted by the witchery of fancy.

ST. VICTOR. Truth is not interpreted at all by imagination. It is only clothed, and represented in figure within, for the intellect to read the substance of the thing; or it is expressed in figurative language without for intellect to communicate the substance to another intellect. Does the substance depend upon the imaginative figure, which is not merely transparent but illuminating? And, if the figures change with place, time and men, does the substance change? Is a man different to-day because the coat he wears is different from that of yesterday? Nay, if any one is foolish enough to opine that all there is in a man is only his clothes and style and purse, does that folly change him one jot or tittle?

There, my dear Benjamin, you have just touched as with a needle the very nerve of Modernism in its treatment of the Bible, of our Lord, and the Christian articles of belief. It says that we are always bringing to faith, as time goes on, something of our own. This indeed is very natural in nineteen centuries, amid so many nations and so many styles of thought. Now from this obvious platitude Modernism slips over to the substance of faith, to the Personality of Christ, and to every truth about God-all

the substantials saying dogmatically that all may differ and change with time and peoples: "One faith persists even when it is expressed in forms most divergent from that which prevailed in the early centuries." Here another, in The Hibbert Journal, says: "At no point in the development of Christianity has Christian faith been the simple acceptance of the Person of Jesus, any more than of His miracles, but that the believer has always brought something with him, and that something not the same. He has formed Jesus in the image of his own needs and ideals." And this, says the writer, makes of the Incarnation, not a simple fact, but a very complex one.

But, on the contrary, let us notice that this very fact of the Incarnation, or God Made Man appearing among us, shows distinctly how no complexity of imagery or detail can alter the reality of a plain central substance. For was not a fourfold Gospel by four different men in different places, and for distinct uses, a very complex proceeding in describing one character, which surely ought to come out different in a fourfold treatment so "complex?" And nevertheless among so many wondrous things one result issues clear, that an unmistakable Person, an identical character, the very charm of our humanity in a living breathing Person, stands out on every page of the Gospels, in the midst of facts differing, speeches not the same, signs and wonders selected by the Evangelists as suited to their purpose. Here you have varied clothing, "complex" representation, the greatest variety of imagery in the setting of the scenes and the succession of events, and with all that, only the one Person stands forth. What do you think of the Modernist's fallacy in confounding a man with his clothing, in order to get out of the Bible

a new fashion of Christ and Christianity for the seasons and generations as they come?

BENJAMIN. Do you imply that this argument from imagery or the clothing of truth is the stock in trade with the Modernist?

ST. VICTOR. It underlies a simple fallacy by which he is trying to "popularize," as he calls it, his theory -throwing dust in people's eyes by casting up in a medley accident and substance together, what appears and what is understood. It is quite a favourite mode of proceeding now in the English-speaking world; the object being to get rid of all the plain things which the Bible says in the Old and New Testament, and to juggle with the entire Christian Creed which is the basis of Christianity from the beginning until now. The propagandists are largely and chiefly persons who have sworn to Christian Articles of belief, to the evangelical truth of the Bible, Old and New Testament, and who, having lost all Christianity, but keeping their places, must find a way of compromising between what they appear to be and what they are, and must palliate the contrast by "popularizing" their compromise. One venerable professor of Oxford, Sanday, in the midst of a great amount of roundabout talking, came plainly to one statement: "The first and third Gospels must be regarded as poetry not prose.'

Nothing plainer than that there is plenty of variety, action, movement, in all the incidents of our Redemption, and in the manner in which the nations have looked back and addressed themselves to the Object of their faith, the Redeemer of their souls, and the organizer of their bodily life and well-being in Christendom. But does not all that variety just em