common belief and purpose is essential in every voluntary association, and none are admitted who do not concur in the principles and objects of the association. No one ever supposes that in so doing the association acts in the spirit of dogmatism, bigotry, and intolerance.

No more is the church subject to this reproach for exercising the same right. If it may not exercise this right, then it cannot recognize any doctrine or character distinctively and essentially characteristic of a Christian, nor the kingdom of God as characteristically distinct from the world that lieth in wickedness. Then no persons may unite in any association as Christians, and no Christian church may exist. Then, because man is naturally an organizer and cannot attain his normal development and power in isolated individuality, Christians, forbidden to unite in any distinctively Christian organization, are not allowed to attain their full development in Christian character and their greatest efficiency in Christian work.

It must also be remembered that a church has no authority to punish for wrong belief or for lack of credible evidence of Christian character. A church has the power of the keys, that is, the right to admit to Christian fellowship or to exclude from it (Matth. xvi. 19), — but it has not the power of the sword. The State has the power of the sword, but not the power of the keys (Rom. xiii. 4). The State has no right to determine the question of Christian fellowship, or to control the church in so doing.

2. Theology is also charged with wasting mental energy in endless definitions and distinctions, in pushing inquiry beyond the limits of the human mind, and in discussing needless questions of metaphysics and casuistry. It is a fact that instances of this have often been found in the history of thought on theological doctrines. But it is an abuse of theological thought, not its legitimate use nor the result of its essential tendency. Perhaps the most remarkable example of it in history is the literalism and casuistry of the Jewish rabbis. Their studies in casuistry and their hair-splitting reasoning about words made the study of the law exceedingly intricate and difficult. Edersheim says: "Terrible as it may sound, it is certainly the teaching of Rabbinism that God occupies so many hours every day in the study of the law. . . . It speaks of the Almighty occupying himself by day with the study of the Old Testament scriptures, and by night with

that of the six tractates of the Mishna." He says that a teacher named Rabbah attained so great a reputation as an interpreter of the law, that, when a discussion on purity had arisen in the heavenly academy, Rabbah was summoned from the earth to attest the correctness of God's opinion on the question under discussion. The inference naturally followed that the highest possible merit was attained in the study of the Halacha, the record of rabbinical discussions and decisions in the interpretation of the law. Devoting themselves to this line of study, with its endlessly ramifying definitions and distinctions, they became interested and absorbed in it, so as even to imagine that it constituted the employment and blessedness of the saints in heaven, and of God himself. Their minds became so microscopic that they were unable to appreciate the greatness of God and the grandeur of his service, and of the character developed in the life of universal love. Hence the contemptuous saying of the Pharisees, "This multitude (crowd, populace) that know not the law are accursed" (John vii. 49).

Another result of this word-mongering of the Jewish rabbis was that, in the intricacy of quibbling questions of casuistry, the law in its essence was lost from sight. In building their hedge about the law they hid the law of love itself and made it inaccessible and ineffectual within the thorny hedge. A rabbi, being asked by one of his pupils, Which is the great commandment in the law? replied, "The law of tassels. So do I esteem this law that once, when, ascending a ladder, I chanced to tread on the fringe of my garment, I would not move from the spot till the rent was repaired." Thus the rabbinical literalism belittled the law, obscured or entirely hid its essential significance as the law of love to God and man, and frittered its requirement into the blinding dust of external conventionalisms and mannerisms, instead of the life of righteousness and good-will manifested in loving trust in God and works of loving service to God and man.

A similar tendency has sometimes appeared in various forms in the Christian church. It has appeared as a tendency to undue inquisitiveness into the mysteries of God; and to excessive definition and explication in answering all questions which ramify in every direction and as far as thought can reach, and into the utmost fineness into which thought can be split or attenuated, and 1 Edersheim, "Life of Christ," vol. i. pp. 144, 106, 93.

serving no purpose but to illustrate the infinite divisibility of thought. This reached its most remarkable manifestation in the scholasticism of the middle ages, with its entities, quiddities, relativities, formal causes, Johannities and Petreities. Of this Erasmus writes, "Theology is the mother of sciences. . . . Theology itself I reverence and have always reverenced. I am speaking merely of the theologasters of our own time. . . . Let us have done with theological refinements. There is an excuse for the fathers, because the heretics forced them to define particular points; but every definition is a misfortune; and for us to persevere in the same way is sheer folly. . . . Necessity first brought articles upon us, and ever since we have refined and refined till Christianity has become a thing of words and creeds. increase, sincerity vanishes; contention grows hot and charity grows cold. Then comes in the civil power with stake and gallows, and men are forced to profess what they do not believe, to pretend to love what in fact they hate, and to say they understand what in fact has no meaning to them." He refers to the legend of Epimenides that, getting lost, he wandered into a cave. There seating himself, and biting his nails and thinking of his many definitions and distinctions, he fell asleep and slept forty-seven years. Erasmus adds, "Happy Epimenides, that he waked at last! Some divines never wake at all, and fancy themselves most alive when their slumber is deepest.' In the time of Alexander of Hales, the Doctor Irreffragabilis, also called Fons Vitae, it was debated whether the angels had a higher degree of intelligence early in the morning or late in the evening. "Gulielmus Parisiensis found on computation that there are 44,435,556 devils.” "John Weir, a physician of Cleves, published in 1576 a volume of some 1,000 folio pages. He makes 72 princes of devils, with 7,405,926 subjects." 2

" 1

But all this was an abuse of theological thought. It is no argument against its use in prayerful and careful investigation of what can be known of God in the varied lines of his revelation of himself. The erroneous theology of the middle ages is no more an argument against theology than the medieval astrology is an argument against modern astronomy or the medieval alchemy. against modern chemistry. It did not pass without censure even

1 Ep. to Colet, and Ep. 81, 85.

2 James Mew, "Nineteenth Century," November, 1891, p. 727.

at the time. Bernard of Clairvaux said of Abelard, in rebuke of his rationalistic inquisitiveness, that "he thrust his head into heaven and scrutinized the deep things of God." Another saint says that he saw in a dream or vision an honored Doctor of Theology with a measuring line in his hand trying to ascertain the exact height and width of the gate of heaven. Another rebukes some theologians of his time for their refined definitions of the eternal generation of the Son of God, "quasi ipsi obstetricaverint." The Reformation was in part a protest against the word-weariness engendered by such scholastic discussions. But even in the reformed churches the tendency to excessive refinement in definition and in answer to needless questions has not entirely ceased. But its continuance, though with abated force, is no reason for any valid argument against theology. It is not a tendency essential to theology; but is merely incidental to the limitations of the finite mind. Many theologians deprecate it, and it is gradually passing away in the progress of theological knowledge.

3. Occasion for misconception of theology and objection. against it has been given also in the fact that there has appeared in the church a tendency to a false literalism and a disintegrating verbal interpretation. This arises from the error of regarding the Bible as a mere book-revelation, a book of sentences, an arsenal of proof-texts, each dictated by God and declaring a truth or rule of life for all persons in all places and all times. Thus the Bible is disintegrated into texts. It is searched through and through for isolated proof-texts, to be used in proving a doctrine or justifying or enjoining a practice. Irenaeus rebukes this tendency and compares this atomistic use of proof-texts to the breaking-up of the mosaic of a king made with jewels by a skilful artist, and forming, by rearranging the jewels, the image of a dog or fox, and then trying to persuade men that this miserable likeness is the true image of the king, by pointing to the jewels as real jewels.1 This has been accompanied with a tendency to use each text in its literal meaning, isolated from its connection, as a universal truth or law. Sisinnius, a bishop of the Novatians in Constantinople, was in the habit of wearing white garments. On a visit to Arsacius he was asked why he wore a garment so unsuitable for a bishop, and where it was required in the Bible. He replied, 1 Against Heresies, Book I. chap. viii. 1.

"Solomon is my authority, whose command is, 'Let thy garments be always white' (Eccles. ix. 8); and at the transfiguration our Saviour's garments were white as the light." 1 An instance of disintegrating literalism is related by Dr. James Freeman Clarke in 1869 "In the evening I went to a church and heard a discourse on, 'Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.' The preacher argued that Solomon must have known the circulation of blood, and hence the Bible was inspired. He said also that Job must have known that the solar system is moving toward the Pleiades when he said, 'Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades?'"2 Cardinal Newman in his earlier life seemed inclined to a similar literalism. Before he united with the Catholic Church he appears to have regarded a life of celibacy as obligatory. He inferred this from the words of Paul (1 Cor. vii.). In this chapter Paul fully approves marriage. But because it was a time of persecution and distress he expresses the opinion that "by reason of the present distress" it is well for a Christian to remain unmarried; he explicitly says that on this point he has no commandment from the Lord, but simply gives his own judgment. all and for all time. He said, "If the present distress does not denote the ordinary state of the church, the New Testament is scarcely written for us, but must be remodelled before it can apply." Interpretations like these are of the same type with a rabbinical interpretation of the words of a psalm, "Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord" (Ps. cxxx. 1); "therefore it is good to pray from a low place, not from a high place."

But Newman insisted that this is a rule for

This tendency to disintegrate the Bible into isolated texts. manifests itself also in the impression that some distinctively evangelical and spiritual instruction must be found in every isolated verse. Rev. Dr. Ewer says: "Who is that of whom it is said, 'Lo, we heard of the same at Ephrata and found it in the wood,' but He of whom the shepherds heard at BethlehemEphrata, and whom all sinners find on the wood of the Holy Cross? And what were those two sticks which the widow of Zarephath gathered on which to bake her bread but the two

1 Socrates, "Ecclesiastical History," Book vi. chap. xxii.

2 His Life, by E. E. Hale.

* Dr. Edwin A. Abbott, in "Contemporary Review," Jan. 1891, p. 45.