friend, a man of the world, to whom he entrusted the sacred commission, while he himself gave several days of toil in the fields in payment for the favor. This gentleman rode a magnificent Blue Grass horse by the side of the wagon that carried the ladies, the little boy of six riding in front with his sister of fourteen behind. After luncheon by the wayside delicious fruit was passed to eat while the journey continued. Everyone selected his favorite kind, the little boy taking a great rosy apple. Presently it was discovered that he still carried it in his hands. When teased about it he would lift it to his lips with a beautiful smile, but nothing could induce him to bite it nor to explain his unboyish behavior. In the middle of the afternoon a woman wearing a red waist was sighted in the distance, one babe in her arms and another trudging at her skirt. It was the mother. She had come to the junction of the creeks to meet her children, but mother love was too impatient to tarry there. These children could not remember when they had seen their mother, but they were coming home with their eyes open. The meeting formed a picture never to be forgotten. Language is not adequate to describe it. Not a word was spoken. The mother threw her arms around her girl's neck, placed her head upon her shoulder, and without sound she was shaken from head to foot with convulsive sobs, while at the same time the little boy, with a smile like that of a seraph, crept around and put his untasted apple in his mother's hand-his offering to her whom he loved from the great outside world where the blessing of physical sight had come to him-and somewhat of a better vision which, please God, may grow throughout the ages of eternity!

When the men of the mountains begin "to find themselves" they will pour down into the valleys, as do their rivers, bringing with them the wealth of the mountains-not of soil, but of pure blood, of energy, of purpose and they will bless the world. The feuds will be a thing of the past and Kentucky will take the place awaiting her as her birthright in the sisterhood of the states.

السلام

ART. VII. THE PRESENT THEOLOGICAL SITUATION REGARDING THE ATONEMENT

I. SOME General Characteristics of the Present Theological Situation.

Probably many an an observer of present day thought movements would deny that there is a theological situation regarding anything. Theology, he would say, we have outgrown and discarded. The subtle distinctions of schoolmen no longer concern men under the heavy pressure of the conditions of actual life. Even the preacher who holds his congregation has to become undogmatic. If a man chooses to spin out theological theories by the pale glow of his study lamp, let him do it; but he has no real relation to the thought and activity of the time. Out under the hot rays of the sun the world's workers are busy, and have time for only the thought which is vital and practical. Men care about what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount; that is practical. They do not stop to waste their time and energy in quarreling over who he was; that is irreverent, and useless. Practical Christian ethics has a great future; speculative theology is dead. There is not time even to bury it decently; we are busy with the demands of the present. "Let the dead past bury its dead." But theology, like Banquo's ghost, will not be disposed of so easily. The truth of the matter is that man is a theological being and forsakes theology only to return to it. We really cannot get away from our nature, and it is not of much use to try. The patronizing loftiness with which many men view those who still care about theology is so transitory that we need not be disturbed about it. The human mind must ask theological questions and ultimately will demand some sort of an answer, and when the hazy indefiniteness has been cleared from much of present-day thinking we will begin to realize that more than mental gratification is at stake in the answers to the theological questions. Man's whole practical life roots in the realities with which these questions deal. It makes all the difference in the world whether you have a theology of hope or a theology of despair; and no theology amounts ulti

mately to the same thing as a theology of despair. If morality and religion are to survive we must believe that the very structure of the Universe takes sides with them. For the sake of righteousness and practical piety the great theological questions must be answered, not by specious evasions, but by resolute affirmations. So we will approach the examination of the present theological situation feeling that those who concern themselves with these things in a positive way have the future on their side. At the very start we will declare ourselves free from the vitiating insistence of the Zeitgeist that one must not affirm anything about God for fear of being dogmatic.

Let us now try to look upon the present situation more closely.

1. The most outstanding fact in all typical present thinking is Modern Science. "The Reign of Law" expresses in a phrase the great discovery of the Nineteenth Century. Law was first discovered, then deified. The great philosophical heresy is the viewing of law as self-active and self-supporting. In every direction, outside the church and within, men are afraid of this mighty uniform machine which they have discovered the Universe to be. They fancy laws have strength of their own. At this point the corrective much modern thought needs is the understanding that laws can do nothing; that in themselves they are nothing. A law is only a name for the way in which God works. A law without a person is as impossible as an idea without a mind. The cosmic history can be summed up in a brief sentence: "God acts." The deification of law is at the root of an enormous amount of the inadequacy of modern thought.

2. A second characteristic of the present situation grows out of the results of modern biblical scholarship. The scientific method has been applied to the study of the Scriptures with results revolutionary, if not destructive. That much which has been confidently asserted consists of brilliant hypotheses, rather than wellfortified conclusions, we may readily admit, but enough has commanded the practically universal consent of scholars to make it possible to speak of results of biblical criticism. In certain respects it will never be possible for thoughtful men to look upon

the Bible in the same way again. More than this: these results have outlawed widely-accepted views as to the inspiration and authority of the Bible. It is no longer possible to regard it as verbally inspired or mechanically authoritative. Is Christianity itself at stake? By no means. But the theories as to God's method in his revelation, which are at stake, are so widely spread, that a confusion of thought which makes them one with the faith itself is all too easy and natural. This helps to account for the great mental unrest within the church and the increase of skepticism without. But Christian thinkers have not been without power to deal with this situation. The way out of the confusion, we are beginning to understand, is to regard God's message as "psychologically mediated," and its authority as the result not of uncertain and external defenses, but of what we may call, its moral and "spiritual cogency." To the man who accepts Christianity because it alone fits his needs, frees him from sin, and completes his life, external and mechanical theories of the Bible are so needless that he loses them without regret. Without a conception of the authority of the Bible as vital, the results of modern criticism are alarming; with it, criticism is interesting and useful when reverent; to be strenuously opposed where guided by poisonously rationalistic presuppositions; but in either case unable to touch the profound certainties of the Christian faith. The way to deal with even the worst phases of criticism, where a destructive conclusion has murderously lurked in premises of the scholar's thinking, is to come to the same problems with Christian experience and Christian intuitions. If Christian experience is kept alive it can be trusted to deal with all the problems of criticism and to adjust itself to all the legitimate results of scholarship. The worst result of criticism is when a man makes it an excuse to turn from unpleasant realities and shut the deeps of his life from just the truth he needs. The remedy is not to curse criticism, but to become passionately honest and earnest men.

3. Another characteristic of our time is the prevalence of Christian experience which is not typical. One of the thoughtprovoking features of the life of the church is the prevalence of devotion to Christ which has not the New Testament ring. There

are great Christians who are strangers to some of the characteristic moods of apostolic Christianity. And it is their loss. Because of the type of their experience both their theology and their scholarship are vitiated. The fault is that the whole nature has not been listened to in its call for Christ. There has been no thoroughgoing moral struggle which flung the life helpless until the Saviour came. The great need of the church is a Universal Redemptional Consciousness among Christians. And the way to that is to get men into the current of deep moral struggle. Let a man face his whole life under the stress of the demands of his conscience, and in this way receive Christ, and his whole bearing and all his intuitions will become typical and trustworthy.

4. A feature of the present situation for which one can only have praise is the deepened ethical sense of which we are seeing constant evidences. The whole foundation of Christianity must be seen to be clearly moral if men are to be satisfied by it. Presentations of doctrine which are characterized by ethical makeshift can have no profound seizure upon our time. It would be impossible for a theory of "God's cheating the devil by a piece of sharp practice" to take its rise to-day. The whole study of the Bible and of Christianity has a new frankness and candor, and a new honesty. Men feel that it is no longer possible to deal with Christian truths in the temper of the Jesuit. Every Christian doctrine must be judged at the bar of this alert ethical sense. 5. Then there is a new emphasis on psychology. The facts of experience must be taken account of. They must be treated scientifically. The inner life of men is a realm for careful investigation. While it is possible to do exceedingly superficial work in this realm, if a man has not a proper perspective and sense of values, the interest in psychology, and the feeling that it must be taken account of, is very helpful, and full of possibility. For the closer you get to an adequate psychology of the inner life the nearer you come to the place where it is seen that real and essential Christianity is demanded by the nature of man.

6. One more general characteristic of the present situation is its dawning social vision. There is a deepened hunger for brotherhood, and a new feeling of man's responsibility for man.