submit: men trained in the severest orthodoxies speaking freely to-day of "the theological renaissance" now on; of an existing need for Christian thought to "re-arrange its faiths in new lights"; of "a full adjustment between reason and Christianity to be steadily sought."

The truth is thus slowly emerging into wider recognition, that theologies are simply formulated opinions about God and things pertaining to God; or that they are philosophies elaborated out of, or woven round, the great facts of human consciousness and experience, together with other facts received through tradition and testimony of an alleged supernatural origin and authority. Thus viewed, no man of intelligence and fair feeling will refuse theology patient hearing; but neither will he yield it a blind submission, but will apply to it tests to which all philosophies have had to submit; and this he will do with the more rigor to theological schemes, knowing the fascination which the facts underlying theology have had for weak, or distempered, or abnormally emotional natures. He knows how powerfully such facts appeal to the imagination and to rapturous feeling, so setting all the requirements of exact thinking at defiance often; logic being beguiled by sentiment, the judgment unsettled by inflamed affection, reason uttering itself in the language of poetry. There is little occasion for wonder that theologies should be so often found by the cold, critical intellect to be full of strange or extravagant conceits. Learning or reflecting upon these things, reasonable men cease to regard theologies as final and exhaustive explanations of all that nature holds, or that life reveals, of mystery, some of those long and very widely revered filling one with a shuddering awe at times, by the familiarity they affect with the secret ways and workings of Almighty God; as witness the so-called creed of St. Athanasius.

These remarks are meant to lead up to the conclusion that theologies must surrender the claim to infallibility they have practically asserted so long; that they must cease to insist upon the absolute finality of their decisions; leaving men's thoughts to play freely round the few great facts which Christian Revelation supplies as a basis for faith; looking with complacency upon the largest variety of opinion that may appear in the interpretation and application of those facts: the office and function of theology coming to be regarded as advisory, and not dictatorial. "A very mild, ineffectual sort of conclusion," some men may say;

but a conclusion of far-reaching practical consequence, as I venture to think. How much a general and hearty recognition of it might do to allay sectarian animosities, and to prevent destructive hostilities between the churches! How harmless many of the assaults of infidelity upon Christian truth would come to be esteemed, when it should be clearly and generally perceived that such assaults were inspired by, and aimed at, some theological misconception or perversion of Christian truth, as they often are, and not by or at anything essentially in that truth, or of it, at all. What man of discernment does not know that the unbelief, now so prevalent, finds most frequent occasion for objection or cavil just here? Is it not about time, then, that the religion of Jesus Christ should no longer be held responsible for the fanciful refinements, the conceits, the inhumanities, propagated and done in its name by dogmatic authorities in modern or in ancient times? What an immense relief it would be to crowds of Christian men could they get out of all confusion of mind so created, and from beneath all obligations imposed by irrational theologies, to defend things indefensible, and to reconcile things irreconcilable; the occasions for attempting such feats arising mainly from the creation and obtruding of false issues by dogmatic systems. Happily, the number of religious teachers is increasing who show discrimination in these matters, allowing the specialties of our motley-hued theologies to sink out of sight; insisting only, or almost wholly, upon claims that spring naturally out of the teaching of Jesus Christ; estimating all things attributed to Moses, or to the prophets, or that we have even from Christian apostles, according to the measure of their agreement with the spirit and precepts of the one Lord and Master. Let only such breadth of view and pliancy of faith continue to increase as of late in the religious world, and the occasions will be fewer for sectarian alienations, and for fear of the doings of an iconoclastic infidelity. Such a healthy latitudinarianism is penetrating all religious circles, and in it men of large liberal hopes see good augury for the future.

But the most pressing demands for the relaxation of dogmatic restraints, for a frank restatement of theological postulates and exactions, with a view to their re-adjustment to the demands of the time, come not from within the church, but from without; though many of her own teachers and apologists are secretly longing, I suspect, for relief to their own minds from embarrass

ments springing out of the two-fold relation they sustain to the old and to the new; ingenuity being sorely taxed often in shaping other constructions for old theological formulæ than those they were meant to bear. But the chief occasions of the uneasiness felt just now by most thoughtful and observing Christian men are of a wider import and bearing. Two of these occasions I indicated in the early paragraphs of this paper, but must now discuss them at length.

Criticism has worked over very searchingly and thoroughly, as we know, the writings constituting the Book which we may still justly designate the Word of God-with what results is now known, in a general way, by all persons of tastes and accomplishments to fit them to judge in such matters. Criticism has confirmed the claims of those writings, in the main, to an exceptional character, justifying the confidence and veneration felt for them, by multitudes, as the media through which Almighty God has made known His will to men. But from where we stand now, we can see how a collection of documents such as those constituting the Bible,-of such manifold variety, representing nearly all stages and phases of human progress, from the very inception of civilization to a ripe maturity, and subjected, as the Biblical writings have been, to all sorts of conditions and contingencies likely to affect the purity and integrity of literary productions, and offering frequent temptation for scribes to import their own conceits and designs into them;-it ought not to seem strange, I say, to-day, whatever may be claimed for a divine superintendence and inspiration of the "sacred writers," that a critical examination of such a collection of documents should reveal confusion, inconsistencies, doubtful traditions, with traces of mental and moral infirmity in the writers seemingly incompatible with the evidences we have of the workings of a Divine Spirit in them. But theology, more especially our early Protestant theology, in all its types, knew little of these things; or, under the influence of pious prepossessions, has resolutely ignored them; shaping for itself, and imposing upon all under its authority, an almost purely mechanical conception of the Bible, lacking the "sense of history," with no perspective or proportion in the view it presented of the religious past of mankind. The Book, as so presented, had no natural history, so to speak; no law of growth or development was to be traced in its formation. The Divine inspiration was equal in

all ages, and in all the men who had part in the work of the Bible's construction; such part being that of serving as passive instruments merely under a supernatural energy. Every book in the compilation was where it was under Divine direction, of the date assigned it, and from the person whose name it bore. The Bible was therefore to be accepted as a whole, every part being of equal authority, because inspired by one Spirit; the one great requisite for the right understanding of the Book being an absolute intellectual submission; all unmanageable items in it to be accepted as mysteries not to be inquired into. Now, coming to the Bible with such an estimate of its character and claims drilled into us by our theological instructors, all natural traits disappeared, of course, from the men and women we encountered in its pages; the judgment was confounded in trying to estimate their moral doings and deservings; hideous sins became saintly virtues; the morbid utterances of distempered minds had to be accepted as effusions of heavenly wisdom; all things "found in the Bible," unless expressly condemned, having equal claim to our reverence, because "inspired," and therefore "infallible."

Such was the judgment which men were taught to hold the Bible in, such was the mental attitude they were required to maintain toward it by orthodox theologies, the judgment and the requirement remaining unrescinded and unmodified in the "standards," "confessions," "catechisms," "articles of belief" of our churches to-day. But it need hardly be said that the judgment has been undermined, that the attitude is felt to be untenable by increasing numbers of men and women still in "good standing" in the churches; criticism having shown that uncertainty attaches to the "texts" of sacred Scripture in places; that interpolations are definable in various books; that mistakes have occurred in transcription; that passages have probably been colored in favor of ecclesiastical or theological "views" or pretensions. Nay, more than this will a competent, candid scholarship acknowledge to-day. It frankly confesses that some of the Biblical books are of doubtful date; that certain passages once reputed historical are of traditional authority only; that others are poetical delineations simply; and that many of the "prophecies" and "types," which expositors have found thickly strewn through the Old Testament, are purely fanciful in the meaning and application commonly put upon them. The Bible, in brief, under the handling of modern

criticism, is seen to be a more natural, more reasonable book, than the old artificial, orthodox view has represented; reflecting the lights and shadows of history; showing life as it was actually lived by men at various stages of the world's progress, under varying degrees of light, as recognizing different standards of morals and manners, and as subject to very varied formative conditions and forces. These conclusions of modern criticism may be startling to men of conservative views in our churches, but they are accepted by nearly all men of a thorough scholarly training to-day; few among them finding any serious difficulty in reconciling such conclusions with faith in the Bible as the organ of a Divine inspiration, or as witnessing to the workings of a Divine power in human history.

If, then, the well-established results of Biblical criticism just indicated be known to, and are admitted by, Christian scholars in their studies, why should the old mechanical conception of sacred Scripture be still taught in church formulas? Is it not about time that some deliberate representative attempt should be made to prevent the confusion and shame that ensue from two conflicting creeds as to these matters having currency among us—one, that of the enlightened cultivated few, and the other, that of the uninformed multitude? For the contradictions are painful and unsettling to the faith of vast numbers of men and women which are seen to exist between the views of the Bible given in the old orthodox "standards," and in the teachings of modern criticism. Young persons get, at home and in Christian schools, impressions of the Bible as a book every word of which was written under the direct dictation of the great God, and that every part is therefore absolutely free from all admixture of human error. But a little while later they learn, on going forth into life, that their early impressions are groundless; that the notion of "verbal inspiration" is an invention of theology; that mistakes of all sorts are detectable in the Scriptures as we have them to-day; on making which discoveries, some of those thus undeceived are tempted to impute pious fraud to their teachers and pastors. Then is there reason to fear that respect for all religious truth may go with the rejection of claims in behalf of the Bible which the church's best scholars have shown to be false. A good deal of the infidelity of men and women about us has a tone of angry resentment in it against the imposture, as it is counted, which was practiced