THE REV. T. H. SPROTT ON MODERNISM.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 569, 26 July 1909, Page 8

THE REV. T. H. SPROTT ON MODERNISM.

- In the. course',of a. most interesting sermon, at St. Paul's Pro-Cathedral yosterday morning, the Rev. T. H. Sprott' explained and defended Modernism in the Church. He said man , could ; never bo- a divided life;.he could not" belieyo one , thing as a religious.man,' and something quite different' as a man of tho world.. Ho could not keep two contradictory sets. of. opinions, as it were- in separate water-'tight compartments. -The process of reconciling our religious beliefs and experience with our general knowledge and experience was what was called Modernism. This reconciliation was continually going on, .but thero arose, from time to time, groat crises in the process. One of these crises took place when the Christian Church went out into the ,great Greek and Roman world. Tho Church then found that it. was necessary that' it should givo expression to its messago in a language "tinderstandod of tho people." Tho substance of Christianity did not nlteri but in its mode of, expression it had to adapt itself to•'.tho .ideas and . of the people to whom it had to make its appeal. This process of |adaptation culminated in the Niceno Creed. Another great intellectual crisis took place in tho Middle Ages, and this .was met by tho philosophy, of the Schoolmen, which reached its highest point in tho teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas. But 'the,'scholastic, philosophy and thoology could not bo final, and wlien the Reformation came no religious body loft itself! more free than tho Anglican Church to;assimilate , and adapt itself to the now : knowledge : of each now ago. And now-we.wero in the midst of-an-other great crisis in human thought, caused hy ' modern science, new historical methods, and jthe- growth of tho spirit of democracy. The Church was called upon once moro to reconcilo the expression of tho Christian faith to this new knowledge, and tho modern spirit or it must he left higlr and dry, while' tho great stream of lifo and thought flowed", on". Mr. Sprott concluded ■with a sympathetic roferenco Uit]ia lifo and teaching of the late Father Tyrrell.