which, as Paul says, is manifest in man.' So of all needs, the greatest is a sound philosophy.

No linguist can be a true critic of the texts of the Bible who is not a genuine student of philosophy. Only this can save the linguistic critic from disfiguring, torturing and distorting the biblical account of our first parents, their temptation, their sin, and the simple, natural, brief description of creation in general. As we have already noticed, this confessed lack caused Dr. Robertson Smith to fall into many errors in his criticism of Hegel, and afterwards led to his erroneous criticism of the Mosaic forms of religion. An eminent biblical scholar, Professor T. K. Cheyne, has recently ventured to write: 'I am myself one of those who hold the historical personage called Moses to be unproved and improbable.' In this he agrees with Professor Winkeler of Berlin; yet the Bible is saturated with Moses from beginning to end. Such a mode of criticism eliminates from history every great historical character that has ever lived; yet these critics are especially lauded for their great learning. Professor Cheyne is one of the experts whose findings, or supposed findings, in his department, the general reader is expected to accept without demur. Although of necessity words embody thought and serve as a means for imparting knowledge, yet they must for the most part be of a figurative, metaphorical, allegorical or symbolical character, and must be subject to the analytical and synthetical forms of thought in its dialectic movement in judgment, reason, and understanding as exhibited in sense-forms of existence. 'The serpent of eternity' belongs essentially to selfconsciousness, in which there is a knowledge of an invisible dividing line' between good and evil, right and wrong, knowledge and ignorance, wisdom and folly, happiness and pain. This tempter confronts

the Lord Jesus, as it does every man, and as it confronted our first parents. This is the dividing line between the broad and narrow way, the wide and the straight gate, the way of life and the way of death. Every man has within him the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for 'in God we live, move and have our being.' Sin only bars the way to the tree of life, and converted the world from a garden of Eden into a region of briars and thorns. Sin only-especially sin in the form of pride-makes men intellectually blind to moral and spiritual realities, and prevents them from hearing the voice of God externally in Nature and internally in the rational action of self-consciousness. Holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.' There is nothing more true than that there is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding.' But true inspiration is not something independent of the activity of human reason, nor is human reason something independent of divine inspiration. The true development of man consists in the united activity of these. Christ censured His disciples for their slowness in comprehending His person and work, thus recognizing that they were not devoid of the power of knowing His divine personality. In modern times our greatest men, such as Wyclif, Luther, Knox, Wesley, and Bourne, were especially distinguished as deep Christian philosophers. They were imbued with an intense spirit of inquiry for a true knowledge of God, so they were epoch-making men like Moses and Paul. It is remarkable how little notice is taken of their philosophical studies, yet these formed a strong element in their character and even, in a sense, made them to be what they were. This it was that led Wesley into the full assurance of faith and the conscious witness

of the Spirit. It is very important to notice that the breadth and fullness of an assured knowledge of truth may be of very varying degrees. Our illustration as to a knowledge of the certainty of an eclipse of the sun or moon may be here used. With many, their faith in the certainty of a coming eclipse rests merely on a statement seen in the almanack. Because such an event has always occurred exactly as predicted, the majority of people, though knowing nothing of the process by which such a fact is ascertained, infer that such an event will again occur. Such reasoning is logically sound so far as it goes, though it seems to rest on a very narrow and slender basis.

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Similarly, in religion, many excellent Christian characters have been formed on as slender a basis of intelligent faith; that which they knew and believed, however, was true, and thus gave a firm though, in a sense, narrow foundation. On the other hand, with many the path of logical certainty is left and mere hypothesis takes its place. This is the case both in science and religion; false reason takes the place of true reason, and even educated men become wandering mazes lost.' Still, in all ages not a few educated men have kept firmly to the fundamental doctrines of the faith once delivered to the saints,' though their teaching or writings may have shown some small deviation from the Truth. This has an important bearing on the origin and evolution of philosophy. There is a philosophy in the development of truth all through the Bible, though it differs widely from the process of the Grecian philosophy and the modern theory of evolution. With the Hebrews, God is always the supreme ruling idea. With the Greeks, their beginning is from external nature-earth, water, fire, and air-to vous, logic and God; their philosophy reached its highest

expression in Aristotle. To me it appears very evident that logic was the life and soul of Aristotle's philosophy of nature, morals, and of God as the eternal life of All. As the Greeks, in order to find the universal allcommon principle of all existence, began to philosophize from one or other of the above-mentioned forms of nature, so Moses began with God as the universal principle and Creator of all, and then presented the general forms of creation in a real sense-panorama of the various stages or natural divisions thereof, as they presented themselves to his reflection in senseperception. It can scarcely be said that the Hebrews had a philosophy of nature, except so far as God was held by them to be the creator, sustainer and controller of all, though certainly they in a rational manner recognized Him as Spirit, all-knowing, omnipresent, all-good, eternal. Logic as the science of the nature of thought was unknown to them, so far as we know, but since all men are rational beings, the science of thought was implicitly in them. To this extent, in spite of much error, they could, and did, in many important matters, reason correctly. So there is a divine philosophy in the Hebrew Scriptures, though not in the explicit form of logical philosophy, just as there are the sciences of astronomy, geology and chemistry discoverable in nature by a rational investigation. Hebrew philosophy began and ended with God man's duty was to love, fear and obey the laws of God, which also embraced the duty of each man to love his neighbour as himself. Christianity, in the person of Christ, came to them with a new and surprising light respecting the indwelling of the Spirit of God in man, and man's essential unity thereby with the Spirit of God. Higher than this neither philosophy nor science can rise. The Religion of the Greeks was chiefly polytheism; that of the Hebrew

writers, monotheism; to this extent the beginning of rational thought with the Hebrews was much superior to that of the Greeks. After the NOUS had entered vitally into Greek philosophy as its dominating principle, it culminated in an inquiry into the fundamental principles of the science of logic (logos) as the science of reason-thought. This was an immense permanent step in advance in philosophy, because now, for the first time, did reason receive its more exact form in the Aristotelian syllogism.

Eighteen centuries after the introduction of the Christian principle, Hegel came to see that, when the science of logical thought was properly understood, it was essentially one with the Spirit and Truth of God as revealed to man by Christ in His person and teaching. He all but perfected a concrete system of the logical nature of thought from the concrete Notion of Kant. Stirling, through a thorough study of the history of philosophy, especially that of Hegel, has by a fuller and clearer insight into the philosophy of the Ego, contained in Hegel's Begriff (Notion), made the philosophy of Hegel shine with a clearer and brighter light; and so has made possible a philosophy of the Christian Religion in its depth, fullness and detail, in such a manner as was never possible before. In his Pathway to Reality, Lord Haldane considers that Hegel has opened the way to a correct reading and understanding of the longneglected metaphysical philosophy of Aristotle. Our best philosophical thinkers seem to be following the lead of Hegel and Dr. Stirling, and probably at no distant date the shallow Aufklärung-philosophy of the eighteenth century will come to an end.

Men have been slow in realizing clearly the distinction between the true and false in reason, wisdom, faith, religion, science, logic, and philosophy; between