Which, from the center poisèd equally, "There is no Nothing anywhere to break Its plenitude in this place than in that; "For not in any wise can That which Is III. The Way of Opinion. "Thus far the Truth with reasons sure and clear Have I declar'd, and next what Shows appear To mortal men must be in order told: Do thou to my deceitful song give ear. "Two Forms there are that mortals have in mind "To one they give the Heaven's ethereal flame, Gentle, exceeding light, ever the same, Itself like to itself; contrariwise To another Form they give another name,— "The heavy body of darkness, solid night, (I tell thee all as all most likely seems, That no man's subtlety may pass thee quite.) 170 175 "And then, their names being given to night and light And to whate'er belongs to either's might, Since neither in the other hath a share All things are filled with equal light and night. * "The substance of the Heavens shalt thou know, "The wandering Moon too, with her pale round face, Her works and substance shall thy cunning trace; And how the Heavens were born, by what dread law 180 They bind the world and hold the stars in place. "And thou shalt know how Sun and Moon and Earth And all-embracing Ether, and the might 185 "With unmixed fire are fill'd the inmost rings; "Urging all creatures on the sweets to prove LONDON, ENGland. CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. "CHRISTIANITY OLD AND NEW." This is the title of a course of lectures delivered by Prof. B. W. Bacon, D.D., of Yale Theological Seminary, at the University of California. In order to appreciate and understand the point of view of the lecturer it is necessary to recall the following facts: In the Hibbert Journal for January 1910 the present writer had an article entitled "The Collapse of Liberal Christianity"; and a year later another article on the same general theme under the caption, "Whitherward? A Question for the Higher Criticism," carrying the argument a little further. The purpose of both articles was to show that liberal Christianity had failed in its attempt to find a historical Jesus. The main proposition was that liberal Christianity began its course by repudiating the Christ of the church and by planting itself on a purely human Jesus who, of course, it took for granted was a historical person. It was pointed out that it had been engaged for over a hundred years in seeking for this historical Jesus, because he was necessary to the existence of the movement as a protest against orthodox Christianity. The writer admitted at the time and all along that the title of the article was ambiguous and was therefore liable to be misunderstood. But the meaning attached to the words was fully explained in the course of the article, which was not to assert that liberal Christianity or liberal thought had collapsed as a whole, but only that the attempt to find a historical Jesus had failed. In the Hibbert Journal for July 1911 appeared an article by Professor Bacon, entitled "The Mythical Collapse of Historical Christianity," in which there was a misunderstanding of the above. A meaning was attached to the "collapse" never intended by the writer and a consequent wrong impression given to the readers of the Journal and the public generally. Professor Bacon called upon "those who were reading in a contrary sense such momentous signs of the times as the modernist movement, extension of the voluntary principle in church support, church federation, and the new impetus in religious education, not to be suddenly dismayed." That is to say, Professor Bacon represented the writer as asserting that modern thought had suddenly come to a standstill! What was meant by the title was one thing and one thing only, that the liberal search for a historical Jesus had proved a failure. In other respects the writer believed with Professor Bacon that liberal Christianity "so far from being in danger of collapse is advancing to-day by great strides towards the place of leadership and authority in modern religious life." And not only so, but he regards the effort of Professor Bacon and others to stop with a historical Jesus as a failure of liberal Christianity to be true to its principles. Liberal Christianity in the large sense of that phrase is, as Professor Bacon says, "but beginning its career, and rejoices as a strong man to run a race." And in pursuance of the course under the leadership of the Dutch school of criticism, of which Professor Bacon makes no mention either in his Hibbert articles or in this book, it is fulfilling its mission and carrying out its principles to their legitimate conclusion. Why should it come to a standstill with the historicists of Germany? Surely the doctrine that the central figure of the New Testament was a historical person is not a finality. The writer believes that those who refuse to stay with the historicists and who go on to interpret the New Testament in a more spiritual sense than is possible on that theory are par excellence liberal Christians. They are just now enduring what all must endure who venture to call in question the results of "established scholarship," and to affirm the symbolic character of the Gospel story. In his new book, Christianity Old and New, Professor Bacon shows that he has come to see the mistake he made as regards the word "liberal." Not that he acknowledges it in words that perhaps would be too much to expect-but it is implied in what he says. He contrasts the view the writer advocated in his articles with that of President Eliot of Harvard University in his essay entitled "The Religion of the Future." President Eliot has for a generation and more been the most distinguished Unitarian in America. He has been looked upon as the leader of Unitarians all that time, and his prognostication of what in his judgment Christianity is to be in the future has been universally accepted by Uni tarians all over the world as embodying for them the truth. It is not necessary to say that Jesus is presented by President Eliot simply as a man, and that the "religion of the future" which he puts before the world is a Christianity denuded of all those elements which have made it the Christianity of the church. Not only does it lack the virgin birth and physical resurrection, but also those doctrines of incarnation and atonement which have ever been regarded as vital to Christianity. Professor Bacon's summing up of President Eliot's position as set forth in an article in the Harvard Theological Review (October, 1909) is worth quoting (p. 38): "President Eliot's reconstruction presents the distinctive type of what has claimed for itself, and has sometimes been accorded, the honorable name of 'liberal' Christianity. To him the mystical doctrines of personal religion, the doctrines of incarnation, atonement, immortality, represent mainly 'pagan' accretion. To restore to Christianity its true message for our times we must trace it back (thinks President Eliot) to its 'Hebrew purity' in the ethical teachings of Jesus. As for what are termed 'the consolations of religion' they will be mainly found in ‘....a universal good will, under the influence of which men will do their duty, and at the same time promote their own happiness. The devotees of a religion of service will always be asking what they can contribute to the common good....The work of the world must be done, and the great question is, shall it be done happily or unhappily?' Much of it is to-day done unhappily. The new religion will contribute powerfully toward the reduction of this mass of unnecessary misery, and will do so chiefly by promoting good will among men. This, then, is "liberal Chritianity," at least it is the "liberal Christianity" which the writer had in view and which plants itself on a Jesus who was purely human. Such a Jesus is a necessity for it. Hence the efforts which the Liberals have been making for the last hundred years and over to discover a historical Jesus. Three things are worthy of attention at this point. The first is that this Christianity which President Eliot predicts is to be the "religion of the future" is a distinct break with the Christianity of the church of the past and of the church of the present. In all ages Christianity has been regarded as the religion of redemption; but redemption is eliminated from this conception of it. Professor Bacon recognizes this when he says that it "goes more than half way to meet the Reformed Synagogue and the liberal Ethical Society." None of the great theologians of the past would have recognized this as |