Lord's argument and made haste to revise their theory. Two ways of escape from that absurd conclusion were open to them: they might deny either the Davidic authorship or the Messianic reference of the psalm. They would have done well had they chosen the former alternative, but with characteristic perversity they preferred the latter, and declared that the psalm was not a prophecy of the Messiah at all. It had only an historical reference, and they applied it variously to Abraham, to David, and to Hezekiah.1 It thus appears that those who, on the strength of our Lord's argument, maintain the Davidic authorship of the psalm, occupy a singular position. They hold as an article of orthodoxy a Rabbinical theory which our Lord overwhelmed with ridicule, and which the Rabbis themselves for very shame abandoned.

What was the purpose of Jesus in this dialectical tour de force? It was not merely to 'corner' His adversaries and hold them up to mockery. He had a deeper and worthier purpose. In those days of national humiliation the Jews loved to think of the Messiah as the Son of David. They pictured Him as a king of David's lineage, who would deliver Israel from Rome's iron yoke and set up the fallen throne of David in more than its ancient splendour. It was a mischievous dream. More than anything else it hindered the acknowledgment of our Lord's claims; indeed the marvel is, not that so few of His contemporaries accepted Him, but that, with such expectations, any of them accepted Him. They were looking for a glorious Messiah, and Jesus presented Himself—a Galilean peasant, meek and lowly in heart. Even 1 Lightfoot on Lk 2042.

the Twelve shared the prevailing opinion, and they were reconciled to His lowliness only by the belief that it was but a temporary veiling of His glory, and He would presently flash forth in His proper splendour. As time passed by and He still trod the path of humiliation, they marvelled at His inexplicable procrastination; and, as the darkness deepened, they were only the more persuaded that the inevitable dénouement could be no longer deferred. During the last progress to Jerusalem, with His intimation of the Passion in their ears, they were dreaming their worldly dream. He was going up to Jerusalem, and it could, they were sure, be for naught else than the claiming of His crown; and James and John actually approached Him and essayed to extort from Him a promise that the chief places by His throne should be theirs (Mt 2020-28 Mk 1035-45).

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Thus secular was the prevailing ideal of Messiahship, and Jesus, knowing how mischievous it was, let slip no opportunity of protesting against it. He never called Himself 'the Son of David,' preferring the appellation 'Son of Man,' with its pathetic suggestion of weakness and lowliness. He shrank from acclamation; and once, when they would have taken Him and made Him a King, He fled away and hid on a mountain-side (Jn 615). He made many a protest against that secular ideal which had dazzled the eyes of His contemporaries and blinded them to the true glory of the Messiah; but of all His protests none was more effective than His handling of the Rabbis' interpretation of Ps 110. The Psalm was one of the main proof-texts for their Messianic expectation, and He demonstrated that their interpretation of it was a preposterous mistake.

Naturalism and Religion."

WRITERS on Christian Apologetics are increasingly realizing that their task now lies, not so much

2 Religion und Naturwissenschaft. Eine Antwort an Professor Ladenburg von Arthur Titius, Doktor und Professor der Theologie in Kiel. Tübingen und Leipzig: Mohr ; London: Williams & Norgate. 2S. net.Naturalistische und religiöse Weltansicht.

Von Rudolf Otto, Privatdocent der Theologie. Tübingen: Mohr; London Williams & Norgate. 35. net.

:

in rebutting the attacks of materialist and empiricist critics of bygone ages, but in attacking the colossal indifference to religion with which a certain type of scientific thought goes on its way constructing for itself a view of the world which has 'no need for any such hypothesis' as that of religion, for all possible knowledge of reality is exhausted within the cycle of the natural sciences, and bounded by the mechanical theory of the universe; this view is not inappropriately designated by the term Natural

ism, for it is the present-day heir and representative of all the merely naturalistic theories of all the ages, and this fact gives special interest and value to such discussions and criticisms as we find in the two books now coming under our notice.

Professor Titius' lecture is put forth as a reply to a lecture that Professor Ladenburg of Breslau had delivered, on 'The Influence of Science upon the Theory of the World.' The relation between the two lectures lies, however, in their points of view rather than in their contents; for Ladenburg's remarks on distinctly theological subjects are regarded as too meagre for criticism, and his outlook on religious history is as crude and antiquated as is usual with scientists.

But he is dealt with as a type of those scientists, who, while absolutely trustworthy in their special field, proceed with less precision to erect the generalizations of natural science into absolute interpretations of the universe, with the result that the peculiar qualities of human nature, and especially religion, are left out of account. Ladenburg's assumption of a monopoly of truth for the natural sciences appears in his strange claim that science produced the Renaissance and Illumination, modern culture and civilization, and all our political and social reforms. Whereas Titius holds that, both historically and logically, science is itself a product of the historical and religious spirit; and thus he carries the war into the enemy's camp by an analysis of the basis, and a demarcation of the limits of science itself.

The civilization and culture which made possible the rise of science, had first to be created by the living human spirit, and even afterwards the categories with which science works are creations of the understanding, and abstractions of the mind for the interpretation of its object. Moreover, the application of these conceptions is limited by the particular and individual; the quantitative method of science is inadequate to comprehend the qualitative differences of individuality; and all that is peculiar and particular in man, his whole spiritual being and history, including especially his morality and religion, lie outside its ken. This is no defect of natural science as such, but it utterly disqualifies it to be a theory of the world.

The most immediate and important part of reality is the particular and individual, as known in consciousness and realized in history; and this factor finds its highest expression in religion, and its full

manifestation in Jesus Christ. The abiding reality of Christianity is witnessed by poets and theologians, philosophers and scientists from Maeterlinck and Weinel to Höffding and Romanes. And it is in the recognition of these spiritual interests and values, so obvious and immediate in human consciousness and history, that lie both the solution of the world-problem and the vindication of the religious standpoint.

Consciousness presents itself as emotion and will as well as sensation and idea, and the former constitute the individuality of man and the creative forces of history. But will and intellect, the particular and universal, are in a continual conflict, which demands the expression of the unity and integrity of our nature in an idea of a higher unity, such as is being continually and progressively realized in our practical personal life; in science, in ethics, and above all in religion, the practical necessities and activities of life enter into the formation of the theories and ideals that interpret and regulate our real being. Neither the mechanism of science nor the empty absolute of speculation adequately expresses the realities of history and of the world, but those ideas of Universal Value and of the Highest Good with which religion is concerned. And these intuitions (for such they are) which produce the individual life of man, can only be themselves the creations of a Personal Life, as also they find their complete realization in the Supreme Personality of history; for in Jesus Christ alone is the individual Ego fully united with the Universal and Eternal, and in Him therefore faith discovers the revelation of the Highest Value and the ultimate ends of life and religion. The recognition of this personal factor leads to the reconciliation of religion and science, solves the antinomy of God's free activity and the reign of law, and provides a valid basis for the supernatural in history and for life everlasting.

The argument, thus briefly outlined, is a fresh and forcible restatement of the religious proof e consensu gentium, and by its ranging of the evidence of a free and individual factor in life and history, it is conclusive as against the mechanical theory of Naturalism; but alongside of the critical statement runs a positive argument which seeks on the basis of a thoroughgoing pragmatism to interpret reality as an intelligible unity in terms of Value; it were perhaps too much to expect an analysis of terms within the limits of a lecture, but

the whole positive argument is a blind alley, until the idea of Value, which figures so largely in it, is more adequately defined.

Rudolf Otto's book runs along the same lines of thought, but is a more detailed and systematic examination of the grounds of Naturalism and elaboration of the religious standpoint, and the discussion is limited to the prolegomena of apologetics, to scientific and philosophical accounts of nature and of individual man, without entering on the field of history. The author's view of the relation of religion to world-theories determines the plan of his book. Religion must have its own view of the world, because it can never be mere feeling or mere inwardness; it always involves an element of thought, and therefore produces theories of the world, man, and existence, which will enter into relations of harmony or opposition with other views of the world. Yet the religious view of the world is not to be deduced from nature in the manner of the traditional' proofs,' for religion and its theory arise before any proof, and from the quite different and deeper fountains of experience and history; religious ideas are not to be proved, for they are immediately known; and it is no business of religion to develop a metaphysic and a science of its own, but it is the function of the apologist to inquire whether in the general philosophical and scientific theories of the world, room and freedom is left for the facts of religion known in consciousness, and to vindicate these facts over against any theories that overlook and neglect them, and construe the world without them. This is the test, then, to which Naturalism is to be brought. Does it make or leave room for the undoubted facts of religious experience?

After two introductory chapters defining thus generally the author's standpoint, and the meaning of Naturalism, ancient and modern, he proceeds to state the fundamental principles of the religious view of the world, which are three: Teleology, the dependence and contingency of the world, and its mystery. These are, in the first instance, factors in every religious experience, whence they are known and their reality established. Religion is, first of all, the sense of the wonderful and mysterious in the world; then a sense of humility and dependence upon a higher power; and further, a sense of a value and meaning in the world which indicates the presence of a guiding, overruling Providence; but all these facts are also revealed in

nature, and must find a place in the world-theory. The scientific discoveries of law, order, and uniformity in the world, so far from explaining its mystery only reveal more fully what cannot be explained; and such an ordered rational world, enveloped in mystery, suggests its own dependence and inadequacy, which argue a greater reality beyond, revealing its meaning and end, however, in the moral and spiritual value which culminates in the higher life of man; and science neither denies nor affirms such ends, but its laws and uniformities are events which can be interpreted as the realization of a rational purpose.

The affirmation of these general principles now discovers the issue with various naturalistic theories of evolution, the descent of man, the origin of life, and the like; and the next two chapters contain a valuable survey and critical estimate of scientific theories and kindred ideas as they concern the religious view of the world. But the discussion is limited to Darwinism and its problems, which is regarded as the starting-point and root of modern Naturalism; so the outlook becomes much too narrow and special; for modern Naturalism owes as much to astronomical as to biological speculations, and can trace its origins to many minds, from Descartes to Herbert Spencer, a fact very inadequately recognized here. Darwin's special contribution is rightly said to be, not the theory of evolution, which dates at least from Aristotle, but the theory of the descent of man as conditioned by the hypothesis of natural selection in the struggle for existence, which excludes all teleology. Man may indeed have descended from a lower species, as Darwin contends, but what religious philosophy condemns in Darwinism is, that it so interprets the manner of this descent as to exclude all facts of spontaneity, will, purpose, and end. Neither is the theory borne out by scientific inquiry, for a survey of the opinions of the highest scientific authorities shows that the descent theory is not universally accepted as true, much less the theory of natural selection. This heart of Darwinism (though but a heart of stone) has a host of opponents who reject it with various degrees of emphasis: Virchow calls for caution; Fleishmann rejects the whole system; and the Neo-Lamarckians, Kassowitz, Haacke, and many more recognize the complexity and wealth of nature, its life and spontaneity, and so far make room for the recognition of the religious facts. This brings us to the

question, What is life? and to a discussion of the mechanical and vitalistic theories. The abandonment of vitalistic views and the emergence of recent mechanical theories are again traced to Darwin's influence, although the change was actually begun in 1842 by Lotze. An exhaustive survey of opinions on this point also leads to the conclusion that the varieties of the theories of the origin of life, and the large variety of objections to the mechanical theory are sufficient proof that it is no account of things as they are, but merely a hypothesis imposed upon phenomena.

And all this implies a new recognition of the depth and mystery of reality. Mechanism is indeed right in holding that entelechies, co-operation, guidance, psychic factor, and similar theories are only names for the riddle of life, but no explanation of it, and it may be doubted whether any further knowledge of the principle of life is possible; probably we have here another evidence of the mystery of all being.

It remains, therefore, for the apologist to insist upon the positive facts of spiritual life, which he knows immediately in his experience by intuition. The spirit of man knows itself as free and independent; it is not the product of lower nature, nor can it be held captive by it. There is no common denominator between the dance of molecules in the brain, and pains, pleasures, and thoughts in the mind. The spirit precedes and creates nature; Berkeley's arguments are repeated, and Kant's thing-in-itself lurks in the dumb and blind raw material with which the mind works, but the causality, unity, personality, and freedom which the author emphasizes save him from sensationalism. These and other facts of immediate consciousness he uses for the refutation of the latest

point may be described as a kind of intuitionism, richer but much vaguer than such systems generally are. We may trace three lines of connexion with earlier thought in the three fundamental points put forward: the mystery is Kant's noumenon converted to religion by Herbert Spencer; the idea of dependence is explicitly derived from Schleiermacher; and the idea of teleology here presented as the idea of personal value, has kinship, like Professor Titius' argument, with the present-day insistence upon will and personality, which owes something to the influence of Schopenhauer. It is well to establish religion upon its experienced facts, and to be reverent in the presence of the Unknown; but it is not consistent with any canons of logic, much less with the idea of a free and independent spirit, to argue from the Unknown to the Unknowable. The author's critical examination of mechanical theories, which shows their inadequacy and failure to interpret the whole of reality, is highly valuable; but the remedy surely is not to withdraw the higher functions and facts of the spirit-world from the field of the operation of thought, but to bid creative thought advance to fashion other and better categories than those of a mathematical mechanical system for their interpretation.

It is an injury to thought, but still more to religion, to try to divorce them. The interest of religion in the world-problem is more than that of watching whether science and philosophy recognize its boundaries; its ideal is to redeem the world intellectually as well as morally.

Memorial College, Brecon.

T. REES.

of mind-the theory of psychophysical parallelism. The relation between mind and body is not so explained and cannot be explained.

So must the view of the world be fashioned to recognize the reality and liberty of spirit, the infinite value of the soul, for that is what immortality means—as it stands in the presence of the adorable mystery of the universe, and looks into the reality beyond. God, who transcends the world, is greater than it, upholds it, and realizes His purpose in it.

. The exposition of these principles at length is well written, clear, and even eloquent. The stand

A RECENT writer in the Christliche Welt describes Professor B. Weiss as belonging to the Vermittlungs school of theology. We should rather describe him as an earnest seeker after Truth. For fully half a century he has devoted himself to the study of the New Testament, during which time he has produced a goodly array of learned works, which no man, to whatever school he belongs, can afford to neglect. The conclusions at

1 Die Religion des Neuen Testaments. Von D. Bernhard Weiss. Pp. xii, 321. Stuttgart und Berlin: J. G. Cotta'sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger. Price M.6.

which he has arrived may sometimes be labelled as conservative,' sometimes as 'liberal,' but he has evidently arrived at them, not in obedience to the interests of any party, but as the result of a careful consideration of all the available evidence.

To very few men has there been granted such a long and honoured career as a teacher both by voice and pen. In the preface to this work he informs us that, when he began his academic life in 1852, he sketched the plan, which he has carried out in his Biblical Theology of the New Testament, now in its seventh edition. He has all along recognized that that treatise should be followed by another, in which an attempt should be made to trace back the manifold diversity of the types of teaching in the New Testament to the unity lying at the base of them all. This is what he aims at doing in the present work.

The titles of the several sections into which it is divided will give the best idea of its rich and varied contents. There is first of all an Introduction, divided into four sections-the nature of Christianity; the nature of revelation; Holy Scripture; religion and theology. The body of the work falls into three divisions. Part I., The presuppositions of salvation, is divided into five sections-the being of God; the world and man; sin and its consequences; the divine government of the world; the preparation of salvation. Part II., The salvation in Christ, is also divided into five sections -the Son of God and the Son of man; the life-work of Jesus; the saving significance of the death of Jesus; the exalted Christ and the Spirit; word and sacrament. Part III., The realization of salvation, is divided into six sections-election and calling; saving faith and the state of salvation; new birth and sanctification; trial and consummation; the Church and the kingdom of God; the last things. Each of these twenty sections is further divided, most of them into five paragraphs, e.g. the section on the saving significance of the death of Jesus into paragraphs on the death of Jesus as means of propitiation; the death of Jesus as ransom ; the death of Jesus as redemption from the power of sin; the death of Jesus as means of reconciliation; the universality of the saving significance of the death of Jesus.

As will be seen, it is really a treatise on the religious ideas contained in the New Testament. Those who are acquainted with the author's Biblical Theology of the New Testament, will find

little with which they are not already familiar ; but these will probably read the present work with most pleasure. It is not a mere summary of the Biblical Theology, it is rather its completion. The latter, as is well known, discusses separately the religious ideas set forth by the several writers of the New Testament. But, as it is put here, the different types of teaching characteristic of these writers are only the expression of the religious consciousness produced, in different individuals and at different stages of development, by the same divine revelation of redemption. The aim of the present volume is to exhibit this religious consciousness itself, and thereby to bring to view the root common to all the various types of New Testament teaching, namely, the saving truth fully revealed in Christ. The author is doubtless most conscious how far he has failed in satisfactorily realizing this aim. But he has certainly produced a work of great value to all preachers of the gospel. DAVID EATON. Glasgow.

Sachse on the Nature and Growth

of Faith in Jesus Christ.1

HAD not this discourse been delivered in a German church on 6th August 1903, it might have been supposed to belong to the discussion carried on in a London daily paper during October 1904. It is an inquiry into the essence of religious belief in general and of faith in Christ in particular, a defence of this faith, and a plea for painstaking efforts to deepen and strengthen it. It contains very little that is novel to an English reader, but there is something very refreshing in the evangelical simplicity, the thoroughness and firmness with which the truth is maintained. 'Faith,' it tells us, is not concerned with ideas, dogmas, systems, but with a powerful impression of God on the soul, with force and life. Faith is a conviction which rests on the operation of God, an incontrovertible inner experience. Hence faith is absolutely certain; it is not I that have faith, but faith has me. . . . Faith in God always rests on our having an experimental knowledge of Him;

1 Wesen und Wachstum des Glaubens an Jesus Christus. Von Dr. Eugen Sachse. 1903. No. 7 in Biermann's 'Salz und Licht' Series. 23 pages. London: Williams & Norgate. Price 30 pfg.