I am an Evangelical; I cannot call myself a modernist. I have welcomed the intervention of those who, disclaiming any knowledge of scholarship or theology, have in simple language revealed the power of Christ in their lives. For theory and practice, speculation and life, cannot be separated. We cannot begin to explain Jesus until we know how men and women are transformed by the love of Christ constraining them.
Those to whom religion is external and worship formal are of necessity pretentious or arid in speaking of such matters as the Person of Christ or the value of creeds.
We do not affirm that the Lord's Person and work have been central in Christianity in the past. There is much to be said for the view that they were, from the end of the second century to the close of the Middle Ages, concealed beneath alien ideas derived from the mystery religions; that the Reformation was the hammer which broke the husk within which, under God's providence, the kernel had been preserved during the decline and eclipse of European civilisation.
. . . as religion grows in richness and purity, Jesus comes to His own.
Reason and intuition combine to justify the belief that our Lord had a right understanding of what man can become.
We say that man is not only a part of the evolutionary process. His highest attributes must serve to show its purpose. They reveal the nature and the end of God's plan.
. . . as man develops in the way predestined by God, he will continually approach the standard set by Jesus. Jesus will ever more completely draw men and inspire them because they will more fully understand that He explains them to themselves.
The present degradation of human life is due to man's refusal to accept Christ's estimate of its values and duties. It will endure so long as the work and Person of Christ are refused their right place in human thought and aspiration.
Jesus still lives, great and unexplained.
From these quotations it will be seen that Canon Barnes is not searching the documents of Christianity for a new hypothesis, but rather for a new understanding by which he may be able to present the historic power of Christianity in terms of modern thought. Jesus remains for him the central Figure of evolution. "Human thought," he declares, "as moulded by developed aspirations and accumulated knowledge, will not sweep past Jesus but will circle round Him as the centre where God revealed Himself."