EDITORIAL DEPARTMENTS NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS PROFESSOR GEORGE B. STEVENS, PH.D., D.D., LL.D. BECAUSE Dr. Stevens was a valued contributor to this REVIEW, and because his fellowship with the whole Christian Church was wide and warm and generous, and particularly because the last article he prepared for publication was for this REVIEW, a brief notice is not inappropriate here. He was one of the farm-born and farmbred men, sturdy, sound-minded, healthy-souled, fond of labor; and there was always about him a breadth and wholesomeness suggestive of life in the open air. His spirit was not that of a cloister or a coterie; his comprehension and his sympathy were as spacious as all outdoors. The all-aroundness of his view and the range of his sympathy were in part due to the number and variety of the institutions that participated in his education-Cornell University, the University of Rochester, Rochester Theological Seminary, Yale Divinity School, Syracuse University, where he secured by examination his Doctorate in Philosophy, and the University of Jena, Germany, from which he received on examination the degree of Doctor of Divinity. In Yale Divinity School he held for about ten years the chair of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation, and for about ten years more the chair of Systematic Theology. While successful as a teacher of the New Testament, his most ardent preference, most marked fitness, and most ample equipment were for philosophic studies, and in Systematic Theology he was at home and happy. He rose to notable rank in the world of authorship, publishing A Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, The Pauline Theology, The Johannine Theology, a popular treatise on doctrine entitled Doctrine and Life, The Messages of Paul and the Apostles, The Theology of the New Testament, now widely used as a textbook in Great Britain and America, The Teaching of Jesus, and The Christian Doctrine of Salvation. His last article in this REVIEW was on "The Christian Doctrine of Sin." Not long prior to his death, on June 22, he corresponded with this editorial office concerning a possible article for this REVIEW. He expressed a desire to write on "The Reality of Invisible Things," saying the subject had been increasingly in his thoughts for a long time. He must have addressed himself at once to the writing of it with characteristic promptitude and energy. Undoubtedly it is the last he ever wrote, and the fact that this reasoned declaration of conviction concerning the reality of invisible things was written on the verge of eternity, renders his clear, strong utterance unspeakably impressive. Taken in its matter and circumstances it is a great sermon by a noble Christian thinker who was and is a living soul. Walter Pater wrote of the Greeks that they had been so faithful in the study of the visible world as to merit a divine Revelation of the invisible, which could solace their hearts in the inevitable fading of things visible. That Revelation was Professor Stevens' solace, and is ours. Desiring to signalize his article on "The Reality of Invisible Things," we print it in these editorial pages, immediately following this notice. THE REALITY OF INVISIBLE THINGS EVERY religious teacher is a prophet of the spiritual. All the religions of the world are so many testimonies to the craving of man for certitude respecting invisible powers. What are all their sacred days and sacred rites but witnesses to man's belief in an invisible world and an invisible Power? This common yearning is one of the marks of the real unity of mankind. One of the proofs that men are made of one blood and that they draw their life from a common source is this instinctive impulse to seek after God, if haply they may find him. Hence through all the ages men have built their altars and reared their shrines, and, although it often seems as if it were an unknown God whom they but ignorantly worship, yet we may not doubt that "the feeble hands and helpless Touch God's right hand in that darkness "He fashioneth their hearts alike," as the Psalmist says. Fundamentally we are made after one pattern, cast in one mold. Beneath all the peculiarities of individual life there is a common aspiration after God and immortality. "All peoples," says Amiel, "bear witness to the Invisible. Here we have the link which binds all men together. All are equally creatures of sorrow and desire, of hope and fear. All long to recover some lost harmony with the great order of things and to feel themselves approved and blessed by the Author of the universe." True and important as this is we must admit that it is not easy for us to retain the conviction of invisible things. There are moods and experiences in our human life when the heavens seem brass above us and when our lives seem to be the sport of a mindless and merciless fate. It may be well for us, then, to stop and reflect for a few moments on the reasons for believing in the things that are not seen. This is the subject which I propose for brief consideration. If the theme sounds abstract and forbidding, let me first explain that I am not about to present recondite arguments remote from the experience of our common life. I want rather to inquire whether we do not constantly and necessarily, in the life of every day, assume the reality of invisible things. Take, in illustration, our knowledge of ourselves. Every man knows that his real self is not his visible body. We know that the body is somehow inhabited and controlled by an invisible agent. All thoughtful men acknowledge this fact. Here, then, we are face to face with the invisible. We have found it before ever we started out on our quest for it. Yes, we ourselves are invisible, spiritual beings. The visible part of us is but the instrument of the soul, the mere shell or husk of our rational and moral life. The moment that invisible life forsakes its tenement all that is visible is but worthless and meaningless; dust and ashes. The apostle is clearly right when he says: "The things that are seen are temporal." We have never seen or touched a human personalityeither our own or another's. We have merely seen certain signs from which we infer and by which we interpret the invisible soul. "We are spirits clad in veils; Man by man was never seen: There is thus a world of reality lying behind the things of sense. The visible things-the human body, with all its actions and motionsderive their value and use from the invisible things which they express. All that is visible is but the outward play of invisible forces within. When we reflect upon ourselves, and consider what we really are, it almost seems as if what we see and touch were hardly more than shadow or illusion; the mere symbol of those invisible powers and processes which we most directly and certainly know in selfconsciousness. Take another illustration: music. I can imagine someone saying, "Well, music, at any rate, is an affair of sense. It consists in an harmonious combination of sounds." Let us see. We have no reason to doubt that the domestic animals have as acute hearing as man has. We know that some of them hear far more acutely. But for no animal was there ever such a thing as music. It cannot be altogether, then, a matter of sound or hearing. Nay, it cannot be primarily a matter of sound and hearing at all, for where these are perfect there may be still no music. Here we reach the bottom fact: music is in the soul. Ear hath never heard it. The perfect ear of the animal cannot hear it. The sounds he can hear; the vibrations of the air beat upon his ear precisely as upon ours, but there is no music because the soul is lacking. Music is not sound, nor is it the hearing of sounds; it is the interpretation of sounds and the response of the soul to their suggestion. Hence there can be no music except for moral and spiritual persons. Though the world were as full of sounds as the ancient philosopher supposed who thought that he heard "the music of the spheres" there would be no music in it all without the responsive and interpreting soul. Music is not a mechanical affair, but a spiritual. We are accustomed to speak of certain people as having music in their souls. We thus unconsciously express the true philosophy of the subject. The music is in their souls if it is anywhere. It is an affair of the invisible, intangible world. Just as there may be atmospheric vibrations but can be no sound until there is an ear to catch and respond to them, so there may be sounds, but there is no music until there is a heart to interpret them and to respond in feeling and aspiration. Let us take one more example: the perception of beauty. The case is precisely analogous to that of music. Beauty is a spiritual appreciation. The dog does not see the beauty of a rose or of a landscape, though he can see both the rose and the landscape as well as we. The orders beneath man know nothing, so far as we can judge, of the beautiful. You do not reach beauty until you reach the spiritual. Beauty lies, if anywhere, in the eye that sees it; or, rather, in the mind that apprehends it. Only a being with rational and moral powers can know what beauty means. deepest meaning is spiritual. Its These examples are sufficient to show that our everyday life proceeds upon the reality of the invisible, our own spiritual nature, the invisibility of the whole world of persons, and the fact that music and beauty are spiritual interpretations of outward phenomena. I should like now to present the subject in a somewhat different light. What is this book which we call the Bible? In one view it consists of a certain quantity of leather and paper and ink, having such and such dimensions and weighing so many pounds. But would any other combination of the same physical ingredients be a Bible? Not at all, we answer; the words must be just these and no others. But here is a man who has what he calls a Bible, and it is in a wholly different language. Not a word of it is the same as ours, and were he to read it aloud the reading would be to us but meaningless sound. And we learn that there are hundreds of such differing Bibles. What a confusion of tongues! And yet all these people suppose that they have the same Bible, and we have never thought otherwise. Plainly, then, the Bible is not a physical phenomenon at all. It doesn't consist of certain particular words or of certain particular sounds. The real Bible is a spiritual affair; it is a name for a collection of ideas or truths. One of the church fathers gave us the fact of the case in a nutshell: "Scriptura est sensus Scripturæ"-Scripture is the meaning of Scripture. The Bible is what the Bible means. There was a time when these various histories, poems, and epistles were not yet written; but the great truths of God and man and life were as true then as now. There was a time when the thoughts of the apostle Paul existed only in his mind; they were just as real and true before they were written down as after. For a long time the words of Jesus were not committed to writing; had the church then no gospel? It had, in part at least, the same Bible which we have, though as yet a particular system of signs had not been put to use for its outward, visible expression. It is perfectly plain, then, that the Bible, considered as a book, is simply a collection of symbols for certain ideas or truths, and that the real Bible consists in these ideas and truths themselves; and this invisible body of truth has value or power for me only as I spiritually apprehend it and respond to it in feeling, desire and action. Books are nothing but a collection of signs by which I spiritually interpret the thoughts and feelings of other men's minds-in most cases the minds of the distant and the dead. What is the study of literature if not communion with the invisible? But this is no less true if the book we read or study was written by our most intimate friend. The book is but the symbol of his mind; a bridge, as we may say, by which we cross over the mysterious gulf which separates all persons into participation in his thought. The |