Page:Religion of a Sceptic (IA religionofscepti00powy).djvu/12

Modernists in this debate is even less complimentary.

If the defenders of Dogma defend it blindly, clumsily, childishly; the enemies of Dogma attack it with a crudity, an insolence, a theatrical sentimentality, such as show that they, like their opponents, have not the remotest idea as to the real place in human life of the thing they are criticizing.

Now what exactly is the attitude of the peaceful and sceptical minority whose reactions I am trying to represent, to the dramatic activities of these modern preachers?

I think I can best indicate what I mean by imagining the actual case of some visitor to New York, a visitor neither more nor less unbelieving than the average but with a deep instinctive reverence for the traditions of the church of Christendom.

Imagine such an one wandering about the city of New York on some casual Sunday afternoon; and drifting, first into Trinity Church, and then, a little later, into St. Mark's. What would his feelings, his dominant instinctive emotions be, in the two edifices?

Would he not in the first case put easily aside, as something to be taken wearily for granted, the explanatory harangue from the orthodox pulpit, while he gave himself up to the famil-