If we turn to the official documents of the Christian Church, we find that the doctrine of the Inspiration of Scripture found no place in them in early times. It was not till after the Reformation that the inerrancy of Scripture was formulated into a doctrine. The earlier Reformed Confessions of Faith make no allusion to it. Even in our own Thirty-Nine Articles Scripture is regarded as containing, rather than being, the revelation of God's Will. The Fathers quoted the Bible much as our Lord and the writers of the New Testament quoted the Old Testament. That is to say, they regarded it with the utmost reverence, and were accustomed to cite it as authoritative. But, as a rule, they laid down no principle of the impossibility that any error was to be found in it; and, as we have seen, it gradually became the custom to cite the words of the Fathers as practically on a level with Holy Scripture. We have seen how the opinion grew up that no error of any kind was to be found in the Scriptures. The way in which, after it had been adopted, it was defended, is a remarkable instance of confusion of thought. The chief modern writers who hold this view have confounded inspiration, authority, and infallibility, and have imagined that by citing authorities to prove the first two points they have incontrovertibly established the third. It is surprising to notice how widely this confusion of thought has extended. It has become necessary to remind the world that to predicate the most unquestionable inspiration, the most weighty and venerable authority, of a person or of a volume, is not the same thing as to prove its absolute infallibility in every respect. The proposition is no more true of inspired books than of inspired men. We predicate liability to error of all the inspired writers of the Old and New Testament. Our Lord alone, we declare, was without sin or error. On what principle do we conclude that those who went before and those who followed Him, though fallible when they acted, were infallible when they wrote ? The fact is that the credenda required in the early Church were not elaborate expositions of the doctrines of the Christian faith, but were exceedingly few and simple. Whether we regard the form of confession of faith tendered to the Ethiopian Church as genuine or not, we may be sure that in all cases what was required of candidates for baptism was a simple profession of faith in Jesus Christ and of acceptance of the principal features of His teaching. The idea of tendering for acceptance as a condition of salvation a large and unsystematic body of Apostolic literature, contained in letters and other documents called forth by the special exigencies of the early Church, and dealing with those special exigencies on Christian principles, is of entirely modern date. In Apostolic times it was for a long time impossible, for the simple reason that such a volume as the New Testament was not in existence. For centuries afterwards such a declaration would hardly have been demanded, because the majority of Christian people had probably never had such a volume in their possession. It was not until some time after the Reformation, when the Bible had been printed and was becoming widely circulated, that Christian communities began to say to their members-to use the words of Wakefield Church Congress-"There it is! Take it! are an infidel." Mr. Aitken at the The truth seems to be that we are called upon to believe in inspired men, rather than an inspired book; and we are to regard this inspiration as positive, rather than negative. These men do not simply preserve us from intellectual error, or lay down propositions that no man can dispute. They nerve us to combat evil, to be valiant for the truth. And we value the Scriptures, not because every word contained in them is necessarily to be believed in order that we may be saved, still less because the Church propounds them to us as the infallible counsel of God, but because they testify of Christ. The Old Testament shows us what means were taken to educate the world for His coming, and how men were brought to look forward to and patiently to wait for it. The New Testament enables us fully to understand what His message to man was. Many may read the Bible and utterly fail to deduce a satisfactory and coherent theological system from an interpretation of its language. Most men, if they were wise, would shrink from the task. But no man can fail to learn from the Scriptures what was the Gospel that Christ commanded to be preached as the good tidings of salvation. Many may go astray if they imagine themselves required to regard every sentence of Scripture as being on the same level, to harmonize apparent contradictions, to draw correct conclusions from arguments of extreme complexity and difficulty. But none can fail to see that what is propounded to us as essential to salvation is that God revealed His Divine life to us through the Incarnation of His Son, that the perfected humanity of the Son is imparted to us through the agency of the Holy Ghost, and that thereby the whole body of the Christian Church becomes the "habitation of God through the Spirit." Thus the Bible is of inestimable value to us, not because every single word of it is equally binding on our conscience with every other, but because it is a trustworthy record of God's education of the world for the coming of His Son, and of the Gospel of Salvation which that Son preached. We do not accept the Scriptures on the authority of the Church, but on the authority of Christ. We accept them because they tell us what message Christ commissioned His Apostles to deliver, on the authority of the Apostles themselves. The Church's function is to preserve these title deeds of her inheritance, and to show us the evidence for their genuineness. That evidence every man may examine for himself, or, if he pleases, he may take it on trust. But all the Christian Church can require of him as a condition of salvation is the acceptance of the Gospel which Christ preached, and neither more nor less. She has no right to pledge him to elaborate systems of doctrine invented since the Apostolic times; she has no right to insist that he shall subscribe formulæ drawn up in the darkness and ignorance of the Middle Ages; she has no right to demand from him an acceptance of the modern notion that no error of any kind can by any possibility have crept into Scripture. She can only ask him to accept the Bible as an authentic record of the truths God has communicated to His people, and of the way in which they were made known. Thus then, the Scriptures are a body of writings of inestimable value, given by God to His Church, in order to enshrine His message to man. They speak to us with a very high authority. Their writers were in possession of special guidance, special information, special inspiration of God. Therefore, no man with ordinary common sense, to say nothing of the Gospel virtues of reverence and humility, would speak slightingly of them or lightly reject anything they contained. But if we go further than this, we are on unsafe ground. To quote Mr. Aitkin's speech at Wakefield once more, "The Apostles did not demand belief in the cosmogony of Moses as the condition of baptism. They preached Jesus and the Resurrection— Jesus as the Incarnation of Divinity." That master-key once grasped, men may safely trust it to unlock all difficulties. But the first principles of belief are not difficult they are so simple that any child may understand them. We are not required to pledge our assent to intricate theological systems, we are only asked to believe in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost-the Name into which we are baptized. The Bible is dear to us because it speaks, and speaks with authority, of Him, and the salvation He came to bring. But when it comes to the demand that we shall not only respect and reverence that holy book, but admit that it cannot, by any possibility, contain a single error, we may boldly ask in whose name such a demand is made. Not in that of Christ, for He never said anything of the kind. Not in that of His Apostles, for they committed themselves to no such statement. Not in that of the Universal Church, for the Universal Church has never propounded it as a condition of salvation. Not in the name even of the Reformed Churches, for it was only in their later Confessions of Faith that the doctrine began to make its appearance, and then only under the pressure of a supposed logical necessity. I have attempted to show that no such logical necessity ever existed. The necessary truths of Christianity, it has been contended in these pages, are not a complicated system of theology, gathered with infinite care and pains from the obiter dicta of sacred writers who were engaged in applying those necessary truths to the wants of their own day. Rather they would appear to be a few simple facts involving correct conceptions of our true relation to God and to each other. Those facts, and those alone, have been given to the Church to hand down, and she is vouchsafed the aid of the Holy Spirit to expand and develop them, and to apply them to human needs as they arise. They are the regula fidei of which Irenæus and Tertullian speak. They are the deposit of truth of which the Church is the appointed witness and keeper. It is they, I venture to repeat, and neither the Church, nor yet the Bible, that we must regard as infallible and necessary truth. It is they which constitute that simple norm of Christian doctrine which St. Paul termed his "Gospel," and which is all that we require for our soul's health. The enunciation of these facts has assumed the form, in the Christian Church, of Creeds. But it is not confined to the Creeds. It is as truly found in such passages as the prologue to St. John's Gospel, or the declaration of first principles in 1 Cor. xv., or the memorable passage in St. John's Epistle, "This is the witness, that God hath given us eternal Life, and this Life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath the Life, and he that hath not the Son hath not the Life," coupled with another passage in the same Epistle, "In this we know that we dwell in Him and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit." The only certain cure for the disorders of our own time is to bear clearly in mind that Jesus Christ delivered to us no propositions concerning the infallibility of the Church, nor of the Bible, nor any other theories of a purely intellectual kind, but Life-Life from the Father, in Himself, and through His Spirit. This "Life," developed patiently, lovingly, cautiously, honestly, fairly, will prove hereafter, as indeed it has proved hitherto, to be the "Light of men." 'Light of men." Wherever in the past it has failed to guide us, the reason has been that we have interpreted it according to our own fancies, and not according to the Divine Will. Let us be more modest and more patient, and, I may add, more obedient henceforth, and the Day at length will dawn and the Day-star will appear, "to give light to them that sit in darkness, and to guide our feet into the way of peace." MR. PERCY W. BUNTING ON EVOLUTION AND THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. BY REV. T. G. SELBY. THE paper on the above subject, sent by the editor of the Contemporary to the Methodist Ecumenical at Washington, was anticipated with keen and widespread interest, and received in some quarters with more or less of dismay. It was assumed that the editor of one of the leading monthlies would have exceptional opportunities of estimating the more recent attitude of scientific men to supernatural religion and that a devout believer who inherits the traditions of a rigid theological conservatism and is actively identified with aggressive evangelism in the West End of London, would not err by conceding too much to science. In some sections of the Ecumenical Delegation the essay created a panic; but whether the panic victims or the panic producer ought to share the chief blame of the incident, the readers of this article must judge for themselves. The paper throughout was hypothetical in its form of statement. The introduction premised that "By science was meant pre-eminently the doctrine of evolution which has come to dominate every field of modern thought. If the extreme view of evolution is accepted, where does the Christian believer find himself? Can the various articles of our faith adjust themselves to the new atmosphere?" In the judgment of the essayist, "evolution left the argument for a First Cause where it found it, or, if anything, accentuated its force. The new scientific doctrine scarcely helped belief in the goodness of God. A sense of the Divine Fatherhood is an intuition of the heart, and not the conclusion of an inductive process. The belief in immortality arises out of our sense of the Fatherhood of God, and is neither helped nor hindered by the modern revolution in thought. Perhaps the difficulties of the bodily resurrection have been minimized, for identity has been shown to consist not in the molecules of the body themselves, but in the formula that underlies the specific organization. Free will is inexplicable in the terms of the physical universe. The highest authority on the will is the conscious will itself.” 86 66 In the latter part of the paper, Mr. Bunting pointed out that "it is in our conception of the spiritual history of man that the new science threatens the most disturbing revolution." Consciousness, volition, moral sense are produced side by side with a growing complexity of structure which seems to be necessary for their adequate manifestations. The interaction of society develops ethics, and perhaps religion." "Such assertions," says the essayist, seem to take our breath away. But if the growth of mind is related to physical growth in the child, and we still believe the child to be the possessor of a soul, what greater difficulty exists if such should prove to be the fact in the wider history of the race. The doctrine of evolution helps to explain the relative character of all early morality and the probable defect and impermanence of our own standards in comparison with the higher ideals that are yet before us. The Bible story of the Fall will represent the moment when on the evolutionary view man's moral consciousness awoke to the sense of guilt. It will be asked," said the essayist, "how it is consistent with a doctrine of gradual development that any one specimen of the race should be unique? For such an assumption is, of course, implied in the received view of the person of Christ. Well, uniqueness is not unnatural; genius is not shown to be progressive. The objection to uniqueness disappears if it is fundamental. In conclusion, it was well shown that the field opened up by evolutionary science gives boundless scope to hope and faith. It does not yet appear what we shall be." Such is a brief outline of a singularly subtle and suggestive paper. A little confusion in the essay, and much misunderstanding on the part of its hearers, arose from the fact that two issues were apparently present to the mind of the writer. The title and opening passages seem to suggest that it was Mr. Bunting's aim to sketch the effect of evolution on the religious beliefs of the scientific minds of the present decade. The essay, however, goes on to discuss the more general question how far evolution will compel a re-statement of the cardinal articles of the Christian faith, and what forms of phraseology will promote a concordat between the two. The essay might perhaps have gained in force and lucidity if it had defined in its introductory passages the extent to which the believer, scientific or otherwise, must hold himself indebted for some of his first principles to consciousness or intuition. Perhaps the parenthetical form in which references to these questions are put is a concession to the left wing of scientists who frown on metaphysics, and deny it a place in the category of exact knowledge; but is it not a little sign of weakness that, without making a clear and courageous claim of this sort at the beginning, the writer should |