modernism both in publications and in teaching and preserve from it the clergy and the young." These defensive measures lead close to obscurantism, not only denying the right of private judgment but the means for forming private judgment. Carried out consistently the world would have to bow at the knee of the Pope and submit all the great problems of human destiny to his decision, accepting the answer without protest and with childlike trust.

That the Modernists have not been silenced by this formidable document is shown by a publication which came in its wake, entitled "What We Want: An Open Letter to Pius X. from a Group of Priests."* It comes from Italy. The authors take the Holy Father to task somewhat in the manner of the reformers of the sixteenth century. They profess to be true Roman Catholics and deprecate schism. They deny allegiance to the misty Neo-Catholicism which reduces religion to an indefinable emotion. "For us," they say, "Christianity is the highest expression of religion and of Christianity in its turn we consider Roman Catholicism to be the amplest realization." Still they claim the right to affirm that other religions outside of Roman Catholicism, outside of Christianity even, are also revelations of God to the human soul. They plead for an abandonment of coercive measures by the Church and for permission to study the Scriptures critically. The evolution of dogmas is conceded. The rights of reason are demanded. Reasonable men cannot be asked to give their "adhesion to certain assertions determined by the blind faith of souls, however holy." For instance, they cannot adhere "to what you (Pius X.) yourself affirmed in the Encyclical of October 27, 1904, viz. that the Hebrew patriarchs were familiar with the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception and found consolation in the thought in the solemn moments of their life." They welcome science and democracy and seek to make them their own. "One thing, at least, is certain, that democracy has come to stay; that to the * Reviewed in The Spectator, September 21, 1907.

:

generations of the near future any other conception of authority will be simply unthinkable; that if the authority of popes, councils and bishops cannot be reinterpreted in the same, it is as irrevocably doomed as the theologies of man's childhood."

The battle has evidently begun in the Roman fold. Those in a position to know, like Mr. Sabatier, declare that many young men are in sympathy with the Four Priests. Both parties appear equally inflexible and determined. That a break must come sooner or later no one can doubt. It is the beginning of a new movement with consequences second only to those of the Protestant reform.

There are Protestants who will doubtless applaud the Pope's manifesto. For in viewpoint they are in accord with him. They, too, appeal to tradition as a final argument; they reject the theory of development; they denounce the critical study of the Scriptures, and they put the infallible Book in place of the infallible Man. The view of the world, on which both systems are based, is essentially the same. Is it possible that we are on the verge of a new alignment in Christianity when the Modernists of all churches will unite on one side and the Medievalists will join hands on the other? The signs of the times point to an inevitable reconstruction, the method of which no one can foretell.

In conclusion we shall summarize certain prominent characteristics of the Encyclical:

1. Like all papal documents, this is given to unwarranted generalizations. With a majestic sweep of the hand the best products of modern civilization are condemned. No one will deny that there is a strong materialistic and atheistic tendency in our age. But theistic and Christian Modernism is no more accountable for that than Medievalism was for similar godless and rebellious tendencies in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. By their fruits ye shall know them.

2. The statement of the Modernist position is strong but the refutation is weak. Abusive epithets, citations of papal utterances and quotations from the Fathers did not satisfy

even the enlightened men of the sixteenth century; how much less will they convince men of the twentieth! When the appeal to reason and conscience is made in every sphere of life, and the child is trained to it from the home to the university, can it be dispensed with in questions that concern our holy religion? Verily, the currents of the age are sweeping away from Rome.

3. The Modernists do not, as the Pope claims, deny the supernatural nor do they disclaim an objective authority. But they define these terms differently. God is recognized by both as the source of truth and as the ultimate authority. For the Romanist God is removed from the world and speaks through the divinely ordained men and institution. Authority, therefore, is above men. For the Modernist God is in His world and speaks directly to the soul. Authority is in men. The whole matter is a controversy about authority in religion.

4. The conflict resolves itself into a difference of Weltanshauungen. The Catholic Church condemned Copernicus and Galileo and remained immovably fixed on medieval bases. Many of its members have moved out of the Middle Ages and have built on new foundations. The consequence is a painful tension between two ideals.

The Roman system rests on the geocentric theory of the universe. The earth is a flat disc floating on a circumambient ocean. The stars are set in the arched firmament. Above the firmament is the celestial ocean, and beyond it is the heaven of heavens in which is the throne of God surrounded by angels, archangels and the host of the redeemed. Hell is under the earth. The Church, the City of God, is the center of humanity with divine authority to rule over it. The terrestrial hierarchy has its counterpart in a celestial hierarchy, and thus through an ascending series of mediators man reaches the transcendent God. This view has on its side the witness of the senses, the authority of antiquity, the philosophy of Aristotle and the Ptolemaic astronomy. The conceptions, in the popular mind, of the supernatural, of the miracle, of inspira

tion, of incarnation, of grace, of the second advent and of ecclesiastical authority are largely shaped by this cosmology. Introduce the heliocentric system and you will have a view of the universe which will require a reconstruction of theology. The whole structure of limited and local conceptions totters and trembles as soon as the earth ceases to be the center of the universe and the heaven its dome. If the Vatican could have silenced Copernicus and Luther it would not have the Modernists on its hands to-day. This the Pope seems to feel when he says: "Modernism leads to an annihilation of all religion. The first step in this direction was taken by Protestantism; the second is made by Modernism; the next will plunge headlong into atheism.”

G. W. R.

X.

NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. By Philip Schaff. Vol. V., Part I. The Middle Ages. From Gregory VII., 1049, to Boniface VIII., 1294. By David S. Schaff, D.D., Professor of Church History in the Western Theological Seminary, Alleghany, Pa. Pages xiv + 910. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907. Price $3.25 net.

The long-expected fifth volume of Dr. Schaff's Church History has at last appeared. Instead of one volume, however, it is two, each numbering more than 900 pages. The first part of Volume V. is in print; the second is passing through the press. In explanation of the preparation of two volumes instead of one, as was originally planned, the author says: "It is doubtful whether Dr. Schaff, after proceeding with his studies, would have thought it wise to attempt to execute his original purpose. However this might have been, to have confined the treatment of 500 years to the limits of a single volume would have meant to do a relative injustice and, in the light of recent study, to have missed a proper proportion."

It was, indeed, no small task for a son to complete a father's work which he had planned on so comprehensive a scale. Dr. Philip Schaff had finished six volumes and was gathering material for the volume on the Middle Ages, when his long and brilliant career was ended by death (1893). The work was then assumed by his son who has devoted the greater part of fifteen years to the task. He could use comparatively little of his father's material, and whatever was available is incorporated in the first four chapters of Part I. The reason for the apparently long time taken for the preparation of the two parts is found in the vast amount of material that had to be mastered and in the difficulty of procuring the necessary literature in this country. The author has felt unwilling to issue the volume without giving to it as thorough study as it was possible for him to give. This meant that he should familiarize himself not only with the medieval writings themselves but with the vast amount of research which has been devoted to the Middle Ages during the last quarter of a century and more."

The book, both in binding and in the arrangement of the contents, conforms to the former volumes of the series. The reader will find the customary introductory survey, the exhaustive citation of sources and literature at the head of each chapter, and