seems to many of us that Christianity is indeed a fable, yet full of
meaning if you take it as such; for what scraps of historical truth
there may be in the Bible or of metaphysical truth in theology are of
little importance; whilst the true greatness and beauty of this, as of
all religions, is to be found in its _moral idealism_, I mean, in the
expression it gives, under cover of legends, prophecies, or mysteries,
of the effort, the tragedy, and the consolations of human life. Such a
moral fable is what Christianity is in fact; but it is far from what
it is in intention. The modernist view, the view of a sympathetic
rationalism, revokes the whole Jewish tradition on which Christianity
is grafted; it takes the seriousness out of religion; it sweetens the
pang of sin, which becomes misfortune; it removes the urgency of
salvation; it steals empirical reality away from the last judgment,
from hell, and from heaven; it steals historical reality away from the
Christ of religious tradition and personal devotion. The moral summons
and the prophecy about destiny which were the soul of the gospel have
lost all force for it and become fables.

The modernist, then, starts with the orthodox but untenable persuasion
that Catholicism comprehends all that is good; he adds the heterodox
though amiable sentiment that any well-meaning ambition of the mind,
any hope, any illumination, any science, must be good, and therefore
compatible with Catholicism. 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