understand God, sin, conversion and eternal life in the Christian sense," says Ritschl, "only so far as we consciously and intentionally reckon ourselves members of the community which Christ has founded." It, too, is empirical knowledge yet the organ by which we are brought into touch with God in Christ is not the same as that by which we know the world about us.

Science cannot find the Good Shepherd, though it must determine the time of composition of the twenty-third psalm. The religious experience which the psalmist describes must be tested by the fellowship which the author had with God. Yet the fact that some one wrote the psalm is not any more certain than the truth of God which it reveals and which is approved in the consciousness of believers in all ages and lands.

Science can prove that a man named Jesus was born, lived, and died in Palestine. His followers believed that He was the Messiah foretold by the prophets, that He rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven. These facts are established beyond reasonable doubt. But by scientific research we cannot find the Christ in Jesus. We must find the Messiah like Peter did-by living in daily fellowship with Him. Flesh and blood will not reveal Him unto us, but the Father who is in heaven. Our conviction of Jesus' Messiahship does not rest on the experience or testimony of others, but upon the Father's revelation of Him to us. Then we have the faith of Peter, the rock upon which the church is built.

Historians can show that men believed that Jesus was the Son of God. They thought of Jesus as concerning God, and of God as concerning Jesus. No fact in history is more clearly demonstrated. But historical argument can not show God in Christ to us. That conviction comes by revelation and faith. Only when God reveals his Son in us do we discern Him. The first conviction of the divine Sonship of Jesus came by revelation. The perpetuation of that conviction, if Christianity is to continue as a life in men, must

result from a continuous revelation of God in the bosom of humanity. What others have believed, what the dogmas of the church contain, is of great value, but it serves only to confirm what the individual Christian receives by the "intuitive imagination."

It can not be doubted that the early Christians believed in the resurrection of Jesus. That fact was the cornerstone of their faith. Their conviction of its reality is attested by many sources. The scientific historian can prove the existence of that faith. Yet historians cannot prove that Christ rose, so that His resurrection becomes a part of our personal faith. We are assured of the reality of the risen Lord by His spirit in us. Blessed are they that believe and have not seen. The Germans call it a Glaubensurtheil. When men have His life, they will get likewise the assurance of immortality. In Him life and immortality were brought to light through the gospel. The cardinal facts of the Sermon on the Mount—a Father God, providence, prayer, the righteousness of love-transcend the scope of science. They belong to the sphere of religion. By living as if these realities existed we shall know that they are. When one weighs the evidences for the existence of the stellar world over against those of the spiritual order in Christ's sermon, we believe he will find the conviction of the reality of the one no more certain than that of the other. The stars are seen by the clear eye, God is seen by the pure heart.

Men then of the type of Huxley and Lincoln, and a multitude of lesser lights, cannot be convinced of the Christian verities by scientific arguments. They must enter the kingdom as a little child. Just as no one can enter the kingdom of nature by faith, so no one can enter the kingdom of heaven by science. This is not only the testimony of the Scriptures and of human experience, but of psychology and philosophy. Each realm of being must be approached in its own way and has its corresponding functions in the mental constitution of

man.

The

The

The mission of the preacher will continue to be the proclamation of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Christ, proclaimed by men, will win His way into their hearts. printing press will never take the place of the pulpit. inventions and discoveries of science have neither strengthened nor weakened the power of the gospel. The facts of revelation are not dependent on the sciences. The church is the bearer of the Christian life in the personalities of its members. The statements in the New Testament "become clear, and their significance intelligible when we see how they are reflected in the consciousness of those who believe in Him, and how the members of the Christian community trace back their consciousness of pardon to the person and the action and passion of Jesus" (Ritschl). We go to the church for an experience, a living spirit, touch with a personality, not for a theory or a dogma. We find in it the life which is the light of men, the grace which pardons, the love which provides, the truth which inspires, the Savior who saves. Christianity is an experimental religion and when it ceases to be that it ceases to be apostolic and Christian. It may degenerate, as it has in the past, into ritualism, æstheticism, intellectualism, and moralism. One or the other of these forms it will take when the life in Christ is supposed to be communicated by ordinances, traditions, dogmas and officials, instead of personal contact of believer with believer in whom God has revealed His Son. The doubts and scepticism of scholars can be dispelled only when they respond to the invitation of the Master, Follow me. In doing so they will not only be religious but truly scientific.

G. W. R.

IX.

NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

THE APOSTOLIC AGE IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN CRITICISM. By James Hardy Ropes, Bussey Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation in Harvard University. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906. Price $1.50.

This volume contains the Lowell Institute lectures delivered in March, 1904. "The writer's aim is not to offer a critical examination of the innumerable questions which arise in the study of the apostolic age, nor to cover ground with encyclopedic completeness, but rather to outline a sketch from which a popular audience might gain a stronger sense of the human historical reality which modern critical study finds in the men and events of this stirring period of the world's history." True to his purpose, the author does not burden his pages with references to the sources or the authorities, nor does he make room for critical discussions which confront the student of this period at every step. Yet he shows himself familiar with all the questions which engage the attention of scholars and recognizes the difficulties in solving them. He leaves the apparatus criticus in his study and in popular form presents the conclusions which he has reached. In reading his book one is reminded of Pfleiderer's late work on "Christian Origins." In spirit and method of study he is in sympathy with Pfleiderer, Harnack, Weiszäcker, and McGiffert.

Two things determine the character of a book on the apostolic age, the method of study and the conclusions reached. As the title indicates the method is that of the critical historian. The first chapter is devoted to "Criticism and the Apostolic Age." He contends that while the critical method is used in the study of history generally, it must also be applied in the study of Old Testament and New Testament history. In fact this has been done by scholars for a century at least. "The secular historian no longer finds himself in a strange world when he ventures across the line into the domain of sacred history. His own tests can be and have been applied. He sees the regular use of the same canons of criticism which he himself wields, to determine the age and genuineness of documents and to estimate the worth of historical statements." The difference between the conservative and liberal students of the Bible and early church history is largely a difference of method. While the former profess to follow the historical method, they are still bound by tradition. They will go so far

and no farther. They limit themselves by arbitrary lines. The latter will test traditions and the Scriptures by the historicocritical standards. It is not possible to mediate between the two methods any length of time. It is well, therefore, that the introductory chapter defines the method which the author is about to pursue in his study. Those who are unwilling to accept his standpoint will not be profited by reading the book, but those who are in sympathy with his method will find a very satisfactory and illuminating treatment of this period.

The reason for the universal interest in the apostolic age is stated in the following paragraph: "The task before the New Testament scholar is to learn, first, what is certain, then what are the divergent possibilities and how great the margin of doubt with regard to the uncertain. Progress is surely before us, to be attained by the application to the evidence of more thorough criticism, by greater ingenuity in detecting the meaning of the phenomena, and especially by drawing upon a wider knowledge and experience. The better knowledge now becoming available of the background of late Jewish thought which lies behind the ideas of Jesus Christ and the theology of the apostle Paul is one means of bringing new light to bear on New Testament problems. A deeper knowledge of the Greek world into which Christianity came, its language, its religion, its life, is another. Palestinian customs, Jewish apocalypses, Philo, the Septuagint, Greek religion and philosophy, the freshly examined and tested utterances of the church fathers, and truer notions of religious psychology, modern as well as ancient, all these can contribute to that body of learning from which will come new points of view and better answers to our questions about New Testament history." These facts ought to convince the most conservative that apostolic history must be re-written, and that at many points it will differ from the popular conceptions which have prevailed for centuries.

The three main divisions of this period are Jewish Christianity, the work and theology of Paul, and the transition to ancient Catholicism. How Christianity spread from Jerusalem by way of Antioch to Rome, the men and means employed in missionary work, the motives which constrained the early Christians to proclaim the Gospel, the countries and cities reached in the first century, and the number and quality of the converts-these topics are discussed in the second chapter. The substance of the missionary's Gospel was "monotheism, the service of the living and true God instead of idols; the Judgment, with the whole system of moral requirements which it implied; Jesus Christ raised from the dead to be the Lord in Heaven, through faith in whom sin is forgiven and punishment averted-these are the ideas which the Christian apostles found effective."