He bathes himself in idealistic
philosophy, he dabbles in liberal politics, he accepts and emulates
rationalistic exegesis and anti-clerical church history. Soon he finds
himself, on every particular point, out of sympathy with the acts and
tendencies of the church to which he belongs; and then he yields to
the most pathetic of his many illusions--he sets about to purge this
church, so as not to be compelled to abandon it; to purge it of its
first principles, of its whole history, and of its sublime if
chimerical ideal.
The modernist wishes to reconcile the church and the world. Therein he
forgets what Christianity came into the world to announce and why its
message was believed. It came to announce salvation from the world;
there should be no more need of just those things which the modernist
so deeply loves and respects and blushes that his church should not be
adorned with--emancipated science, free poetic religion, optimistic
politics, and dissolute art. These things, according to the Christian
conscience, were all vanity and vexation of spirit, and the pagan
world itself almost confessed as much. They were vexatious and vain
because they were bred out of sin, out of ignoring the inward and the
revealed law of God; and they would lead surely and quickly to
destruction.
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