A correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette, who appears to
think M. Renan a final authority about the origin of Christi- anity, is so indignant with the Rev. Page Roberts, for a sermon in which he was so rash as to refer "the complex product which is known as Christianity " to sources " in the Jewish nation," that he declares he could hardly retain his seat in the church, when he heard this statement made last Sunday. He with difficulty suppressed a sudden impulse " to spring from his seat, and quit the church." And yet, he was quite clearly out of place in it. Whatever M. Renan may hold, it seems pretty clear that the Anglican Church and Prayer-book,—to say nothing of such authorities as our Lord and St. Paul and St. Peter, with whom M. Renan is said to deal so cavalierly, and with whom M. Renan's disciple assuredly deals very much more cavalierly than M. Renan himself,—have impressed on all Anglican Churchmen that very startling assumption at least as indelibly as our modern physicists have impressed on their pupils the principle of the first law of motion. If it be so horrifying to Rationalists to find a Christian who really thinks what he says, it is not altogether without bewildering effect for Christians, even at the present day, to find a Rationalist who expects, and almost requires, them to think the negation of what they say. Now, Anglican Christians say that Christianity sprang out of Judaism, in almost every page of their liturgy. Is it so very shocking to discover that they actually mean it ?
Previous page
