Thus both their sense for
historical truth and their spontaneous mysticism drive the modernists
to contrast with the official religion what was pure and vital in the
religion of their fathers. Like the early Protestants, they wish to
revert to a more genuine Christianity; but while their historical
imagination is much more accurate and well-fed than that of any one in
the sixteenth century could be, they have no hold on the Protestant
principle of faith. The Protestants, taking the Bible as an oracle
which personal inspiration was to interpret, could reform tradition in
any way and to any extent which their reason or feeling happened to
prompt. But so long as their Christianity was a positive faith, the
residue, when all the dross had been criticised and burned away, was
of divine authority. The Bible never became for them merely an
ancient Jewish encyclopaedia, often eloquent, often curious, and often
barbarous. God never became a literary symbol, covering some
problematical cosmic force, or some ideal of the conscience. But for
the modernist this total transformation takes place at once. He keeps
the whole Catholic system, but he believes in no part of it as it
demands to be believed. He understands and shares the moral experience
that it enshrines; but the bubble has been pricked, the painted world
has been discovered to be but painted.
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