A DEBATE BETWEEN MODERNISM AND AUTHORITY.* THIS will be a
most interesting book not only to the student of theology, but to the student of human nature. We do not remember anything quite like it in the history of religious controversy, and we doubt if anything of the, sort would be possible anywhere except in our English Universities. Of the disputants, Dr. Sanday is well known ; Mr. Williams is described as " Chaplain-Fellow of Exeter College." He is evidently a young man, and we have not met any previous writing by him except a somewhat truculent attack on the Archbishop's Kikuyu opinion. He would seem to belong to the latest and most uncom- promising school of " Catholic " Churchmen, of which Mr. R. A. Knox is the better-known representative ; and, indeed, he closely resembles him in his methods of controversy, especially in his reliance on deductive reasoning from untestable postulates, and in a serene indifference to the, congruity of his beliefs with what we should call common-sense. The contrast all through the discussion, which consists of three papers Form and Content in the Christian Tradition. A Friendly Discussion between W. Sanday, D.D., and N. F. Williams, 31..A. London: Longman and Co. Ins. net.] on each side—between the trembling anxiety of the older man to seize and express, as exactly as he can, what he conceives to be " the truth," and the jubilant cocksureness of the younger that he has already got s the truth whole and unmixed in his oecumenical formulae—is very noticeable ; and Mr. Williams's treatment of his senior's arguments, though formally courteous, reminds us not a little of the syllogistic handling of the Reformers at their trial by the young bloods of the Marian reaction. We cannot attempt to give a risumi of the discussion; and, indeed, the usefulness of the book does not seem to us to lie in any results arrived at, but in the statement and restatement by each side of their principles ; and hardly less in the exhibition of the temper of mind which accompanies those principles respectively. Dr. Sanday in his eagerness to find common ground with his opponent has not taken much trouble to expose the fallacies in his argument. This is a task for a younger man, and we hops some one will undertake it. It is a curious fact that arguers who make most play with logical terminology are often most inaccurate reasoners.
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