4 JUNE 1910, Page 17

ANGLICANISM AND MODERNISM.

[To THE EDITOR Or TUB " StECTATOR."] Sin,—A good deal of misconception is imported into the subject which odrgs has discussed in your issue of May 21st with so much insight by the confusion between Modernism as a movement in the Roman Church and Modernism in the larger sense in which it stands for modern theology. It is with the latter that the English Church is mainly concerned. It is not with the conclusions of M. Loiay, or any individual scholar, however eminent, that we have to reckon ; the secures judicat orbis terra,-um, if one may use the words in this con- nexion, meets us; the substantial consensus of opinion—not of course on points of detail, but on the general lines of questions which have ceased to be controversial—among those who know. Here there is a certain insularity about English, and particularly about Anglican, thinking; the penitus toto divisos orbs Britannos has not lost its point. No one can fail to observe bow seldom an English writer is referred to by any scientific German theologian; the index of authors and works appendel to Schweitzer's " Quest of the Historical Jesus " is an example. The inference is obvious, though it is somewhat mortifying to our self-esteem. The first condition of efficiency in our theological thinking is to get out of our backwater into the main stream of European thought. —I a‘m, Sir, &c.,