EDITORIAL NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS.

OPINION.

THE theological peculiarities of the late Albrecht Ritschl, professor of theology at Göttingen, are worthy of study, as showing a strong intellectual individuality and a marked, if not unique, evangelical faith in religion. Though assigned to the neo-Kantean school of theologians, he preferred to be free from all partisan attachments, to belong to no party, and to create no school for the dissemination of his teachings. Philosophical in research and method, he disengaged theology from metaphysical aspects and relations, and sought to establish a purely biblical system of limited dogmatics. So single-minded was he in purpose that he did not construct a philosophy on the basis of the Scriptures, nor support the Scriptures by the criteria of philosophy. In his hands faith had a practical and scriptural treatment, without casuistry, without speculation, without the arts of sophistry, without the aids of philosophy. He was, therefore, as transparent as he was positive, and as conclusive as the truth in its scriptural form would warrant. The objection that his writings are obscure and ambiguous cannot be maintained; though there is at times a certain vacillation of opinion that compromises the final result. Inasmuch as he abjured the speculative side of theology, he was not characterized by depth of thought; but the breadth of his inquiry was co-extensive with the area of revelation, and so profound was his seriousness, and so intense his exegetical spirit and purpose, that no one disputed his supremacy in the sphere of interpretation. He was less interested in the how of revelation than in its substance and significance; he also had a genius for discriminating truth from error, but no penchant for sifting metaphysics from . realities or realities from metaphysics. Accepting the normative authority of the Scriptures, he sought to understand their teachings, without any regard to the question of their inspiration, and, indeed, held to no special theory of inspiration. He believed in the Old and New Testaments as the all-sufficient sources of religious truths, and proclaimed them as divine oracles to be disobeyed at the sacrifice of the highest self-interests. As inspiration was neither a doctrine nor a problem with him, but the Scriptures are nevertheless authoritative and supreme, he was careful to vindicate truth from the unperishable value of its own contents and to strip it of all factitious and environing supports, divine and human. The effect of his teaching was not only to subordinate inspiration as a doctrine to the innate wholesomeness of truth, but to eliminate it from theological controversy, and finally relegate it to oblivion or the shades of defunct ideas. He did not intend the logical consequences of his position; but he was so captivated with the truth, as the Scriptures revealed it, that he

forgot to inquire whether he received it by inspiration or no; nor did it seem, in his case, absolutely necessary. He evidently cleared the way to a transparent faith in the Scriptures; he might have done more to produce an intelligent apprehension of their divine origin and essence. Abjuring the philosophical element, his theology was narrow, and yet the honest expression of a sincere mind; and rejoicing in the truth, without a question as to its source or philosophy, he was a good example of a fervent, well-disciplined, courageous, and effective believer in Christianity. He stimulated to investigation and inspired to a comforting faith in religion; but his point of view may be broadened and the result may include the infinitudes.

The aged doctrine of inspiration, as applied to the Scriptures, is again in the crucible of criticism. This time it is the Christian believer who plunges it into the fires, claiming that in this way it may be relieved of traditional dross, and be purified of all internal imperfection and dogmatic impurity. The infidel is expected to reject the supernatural element in the Bible, but the curious spectacle is presented of the assumed friends of the venerable book attacking it by a criticism of the fundamental principle of religion-the very ground of revelation. The question raised does not relate to the value of the Scriptures if their inspiration is overthrown, nor to the value of inspiration if the Scriptures are overthrown; but whether a supernatural religion is even a possibility, and whether religion of any kind is of any worth whatever if the idea of religion is subverted.

Paul's statement (2 Tim. iii, 16), that "all Scripture is given by inspiration," limiting it to the Pauline epistles, or extending it to the New Testament, or including the Old Testament, is a primary fact in theology; but is it a scriptural fact? It is true the original reading is "all Scripture, given by inspiration, is-kai-also profitable;" but this is a circumscribed, if not a self-extinguishing, meaning, for it may be taken for granted without any declaration that inspired Scripture is profitable. The reading that "all Scripture is given by inspiration and (kai) is profitable" turns the thought rather to the origin of the Scripture than to its profitableness as a source of instruction. If its inspirational origin can be affirmed, its profitableness can be assumed; but to interpret the apostle as referring more to the profitable value of the Scripture is to set such value above its inspirational character and origin. We believe Paul was defining the higher problem of the inspirational origin of the sacred writings, and was less concerned about their didactic value. If kaì is a conjunction, the inspiration of the Scriptures is definitely declared; if it is an adverb, the question of inspiration as a doctrine was not in Paul's mind, and the basis of a defense of the Scriptures is not in this passage. Kai is the key to this verse; it is the Thermopyle of theology. The conjunction is the columbiad of orthodoxists; the adverb is the marplot of controversy. There is not a higher critic or rationalist who does not burn incense to the adverb; there are devout men, not a few, who hitch their thoughts to the conjunction, and go whither it leadeth them.

Misunderstood as a teacher,

Jesus is in the hands of the fanatics. religion is caricatured in theories, philosophies, and ethical systems projected in his name, and alleged to be bolstered by his example and authority. Count Tolstoï injects a meaning into the Sermon on the Mount that no exegete ever discovered, and proposes as a substitute for Christianity, as popularly understood, a theory of life that is obviously narrow and wholly impracticable. "Christian science," so-called, establishing itself on the gospels, ruinously interprets the whole scheme of Christianity and brings religion into public contempt. The Church holds that salvation from sin through Jesus Christ is the chief object of the gospel economy; but the errorists hold that the cure of disease through the natural power of imagination and volition is the official purpose of religion. Health, not salvation, is the ideal condition of man; and a psychical faith, hitherto supposed to be the instrument for securing spiritual results, is now to be employed in physical resuscitation, the banishment of sicknesses, and resurrection from the dead. The end of religion is physical life, health, comfort, and length of days. Jesus is no longer a divine teacher or a revealer of spiritual philosophy; but a practical physician, a healer of bodily infirmities. Supposing that he came to minister to the soul, it turns out that he was an empiricist, and instituted a medical school which should bid defiance to ills and rescue the world from paleness without the aid of visible pharmaceutics. He wrought cures without natural agency, and intended that his disciples should do the same thing and in the same way, and yet not be chargeable with attempting the miraculous. His miracles were not miracles in the theological sense, but the concomitant results of faith in the natural over the natural. Professor Scherer, of Geneva, repudiated the miracles of Christ as proofs of his divinity, and taught that miraculous power was conferred upon his disciples for purposes of benevolence. The miraculous cure is, therefore, a benevolent deed, and in no sense a circumstantial indication of spiritual religion. The rationalists dispose of miracles as supernatural facts in the same way, and explain the cures of Jesus on natural grounds, such as ally them to the school of "faith-healers " among us. Professor Weisse says that "Christ's miraculous cures were owing to his physical powers," and that "his body was a strong electric battery, which, in his later life, lost its power of healing, else he would have saved himself from death." Christ an electrician! Christ a physical healer! The Gospel a science of medicine! Christianity a health scheme! The Church a hospital, the minister a surgeon, and the human family in the bonds of physical infirmity, to be canceled by the power of will or by a consciousness spiritualized into forgetfulness of physical realities and conditions! Inasmuch as "Christian science" substitutes the incidental for the essential, the physical for the spiritual, the physician for the Saviour, and the temporal for the eternal, it may be considered as one of the vagaries that has entrapped some sincere and intelligent minds, but which will pass away without permanently changing the popular conception of Christianity or impeding for a day its progress as a spiritual religion.

Evil is without explanation, even in the Scriptures. The account in Genesis of its introduction into Eden implies its pre-existence, and intimates nothing as to its theology. The profoundest attempt at an exposition of its significance is in the book of Job, in which, though the Almighty is a stately interlocutor, the subject is left in inscrutable mystery. This, perhaps, is a notification to human wisdom to cease its investigation of so dark a problem, and to relegate theodicies to the obscurity they have failed to illuminate. Nevertheless, calamity revives the old question of God's relation to evil, and of providential interference in human affairs. The Conemaugh Valley disaster was doubtless a natural event; was it, also, the result of a divine decree or providential intervention? How explain earthquake, cyclone, the electric flash, the raging storm, the tumult of nature, by which human interests are overwhelmed and human lives extinguished? In determining the question of the origin and import of evil we are not bound to reconcile its presence in the world with the divine goodness, for that belongs to another department of inquiry. Bledsoe imagined he had wrought out a theodicy when he had vindicated the character of God in spite of the universality of evil; but, as it occurs to us, such vindication is not a solution of the problem, for, though suffering and derangement of the natural order of life may be compatible with the ends of the divine administration, we know that evil is evil, and gives no accurate account of itself in the divine administration. It is a contradiction of the divine attributes, and, therefore, must be explained from another standpoint. Evil must be unfolded from its own bosom and from the purposes involved in it. It must demonstrate its reason for being, and be studied in the light of its nativities and achievements. Schleiermacher taught that evil is the punishment of sin; but while the distinction between sin and evil is justified, both on scriptural and metaphysical grounds, the solution of evil is deficient unless it is also a solution of sin. This the German thinker overlooked, and hence his theodicy is a failure. Job showed great weakness in his argument against his friends by continually vindicating himself, though in the end he confessed that he had erred in judgment, logic, and feeling. No theodicy having only in view the vindication of the sovereignty of God, or the freedom of man, or the interacting relations of God and man, can rightly claim to have resolved the great mystery. The Judge of the whole earth will do right, and in calamity it becometh man to place his hand upon his mouth and his mouth in the dust and be still, and know that the Lord pitieth his children and will save those who put their trust in him.

English criticism of American writers, however just, forfeits American respect because of the supercilious egotism with which it is administered. American literature is not without merit, and deserves cordial recognition; but no one is so blind as to fail to see that it may be improved, and that it is in process of improvement. American historians, poets, philosophers, and scientists are not so numerous but that they may increase, and in nothing is it claimed that they have attained the height of great

ness.

The English writer is either at a stand-still or in a state of decay. He believes he has reached the limit of his development, and is not, therefore, in a process of development. Singularly enough, English history furnishes many shore-lines of intellectual life that prove the incapacity of the English mind to go further in special cultivation, but it does not warrant English criticism of nations whose shore-lines are still invisible. The Englishman's dramatic talent crystallized in Shakespeare; his poetic talent in Milton; his historical talent in Macaulay; his literary talent in Johnson; and his scientific talent in Darwin. Beyond these he does not expect to go, and he therefore prescribes these limits for other peoples. He is ever gauging poets, historians, scientists, essayists of other lands by these of his own, and discredits them in proportion to their failure to measure up to these standards. But the standards themselves are rusty and unused in England. Johnson's bombastic periods are no longer in favor with orators; Macaulay's musical rhetoric is looked upon as a relic of his day; Darwin is set aside by his disciples, and Shakespeare is cudgeled as a plagiarist. It might be well for English critics to remember that Prescott, Bancroft, and Motley compare with Green, Froude, and Knight; that Bryant, Whittier, and Longfellow are not one whit behind Tennyson, Spenser, and Browning; that Agassiz, Fiske, and Emerson can walk hand-in-hand with Hamilton, Huxley, and Tyndall; and that James Strong, Charles Hodge, and Joseph Cook are not pigmies in the presence of Dean Stanley, Professor Cheyne, and Joseph Parker. The difference between the English and the American writer is, that the one has reached his limit and the other has scarcely commenced his development.

Incidents mark the growth of a Romanizing tendency in the Church of England. The trial of the Bishop of Lincoln in Lambeth Palace, under the presidency of the Archbishop of Canterbury, for a violation of the ritualistic order of the Church is a proceeding that, conducted with ecclesiastical firmness, may tend to check papistical inclinations in her high officials, but, conducted in a lenient and apologetic spirit, may encourage further departures in the wrong direction, and prepare the way for a papistical coup d'état in the old stronghold of Protestantism. The fact that the accused is no less a person than a bishop, and that the accusation relates to the forbidden use of altar lights, the sign of the cross, and the mixed chalice, and other unprotestant services, make an issue that should be determined with due respect for the rights and interests of our common Protestantism. Ritualism in Protestantism is distinguished for simplicity, and is a convenient, but not necessary, adjunct in worship; but in Roman Catholicism it is the exponent of the superstitious if not vicious doctrinal system of the Church. Hence the introduction of the ritualism of the papal Church into Protestantism is the introduction of the doctrines with which it is wedded. This is the "head and front" of the charged bishop's "offending," and it deserves both the legal and moral reprobation of the Church he represents and of the Protestantism he has so ungraciously maligned.