deep for an ordinary man's experience to fathom they are rejected; those great claims were not expressed by Him. On the beautiful story of His Nativity and on the character of His holy Mother we would wish to be as reverently reticent as He Himself and His disciples were. We can understand that if those verses in St. Luke and St. Matthew's gospels may be pruned away, in which the sacred mystery of His Conception is proclaimed in such awful, superhuman language, we should have little reason for reverencing that mystery. It is less easy to understand the mind to which such a process of criticism seems scientific. It does not appear to be proved, though a Professor of Classical Philology says he can prove it, that in this narrative 'we unquestionably enter the circle of pagan ideas.' Nor do the words with which our Saviour addressed His Mother, even though the tenderest of them be cut out, very completely show that 'she resolutely closed her mind against all that was new in His teaching.' Nor has it yet been made absolutely certain that 'baptism and the repetition of the last supper were no ordinances of Jesus,' and, though Mr. Coneybeare thinks that Eusebius down to 325 A.D. 'read Matt. 281, thus: "and make disciples of all the nations in my name, teaching them &c.,"' it does not necessarily follow that this is the true text of the gospel, or the true record of our Lord's words. And, after all, this reading would not prove enough, if Dr. Schmiedel be right in saying that our Lord was not concerned to leave behind Him for the new religious fellowship which might be formed in connection with His preaching, even so much as the tangible centre which His person might supply.'

19

Such sentences are not exhilarating reading. Is it quite seemly that Dr. Cheyne should be responsible for them? They are not consistent with the Apostles' Creed, and yet it may be doubted whether it is a necessary part of Church discipline that he should be ordered to give up either his Encyclopaedia or else his preferment. This is not because he is not responsible for the rash utterances of his colleagues. It is not to be supposed that he agrees with them on all points, but he is responsible. Indeed it could be wished that he had done his duty as editor a little more wisely. He who could

add his own contradictory fancies at the end of his friends' articles, need not have scrupled about hurting their feelings by insisting on some alterations and omissions, which, though they would not have made good articles out of perverse ones, might at least have got rid of most of the thoroughly offensive matter. Even the article on 'Jesus' in a former volume would have lost most of its sting if quite a few words had been omitted. Dr. Cheyne is responsible, but it must be remembered that there is a difference between preaching in church and lecturing or publishing an Encyclopaedia. In ordinary churches the congregation has a right to be protected from anything that may distract their minds from worship, penitence, or devout resolution. In the other case discussion, even unpleasant discussion, may be a necessary means of arriving at the intellectual truth which is the object of search, and Dr. Cheyne may consider that the freest possible expression of opinion is necessary in his book. Moreover anything approaching to religious persecution is an error, not because it provokes sympathy with the persecuted party, which, though it be a politic, is not a very honourable objection, but because the persecuted party has generally some part of the truth with him. Who does not feel some tenderness towards that yearning of imperfect faith—'invalidas tibi tendens, heu non tua, palmas' which Dr. Schmiedel expresses in pathetic words?

'And yet it is easily possible that not only particular institutions, but also (and above all) the formulated expressions of the common faith may take such a form as many a one may find himself unable to accept, whilst yet his attitude towards the matter in its religious essence is entirely sympathetic, and the impossibility of full membership in the community is felt by him as involving grievous loss.'

True, that such tenderness may be carried so far as to work at last a shipwreck of the faith, but a general shipwreck has never yet happened. In the days of unity a General Council was the ultimate remedy; but, though the Encyclopaedia Biblica is an important book, it is not important enough to be the subject of a General Council. That, too, is impossible now, and as a rule the most effectual substitute has proved to be, not the interposition of authority, but the quiet

and irresistible force of public opinion in the Church. That force will, it may be hoped, impel Dr. Cheyne, not to give up Canonry, Professorship, or Orders, but to prepare as soon as possible a new edition of his valuable work, in which some articles shall be cleansed of trivialities and errors, while others are entirely rewritten. As for those whose simple faith has been disturbed, those especially who, with much zeal, sincerity, and fitness for the work, have been turned aside from seeking the sacred Ministry by the direct or indirect influence of this first edition, there is indeed a cause for remorse which cannot be so easily removed. Yet surely the thought of them should move us, not to futile litigation and attack, but to a calm and sober restatement of the positive evidence.

One unfortunate effect of imperfect criticism is that it diverts our interest from the chief use of Holy Scripture. We are apt to forget in the analysis of sources and tracing of the progress of ideas that the writing, collecting, altering, editing, and now the study and criticism of these books, is not a history of man's development of religion, but the unbroken revelation of Himself by God to man. Hastings' Dictionary is far superior to the Encyclopaedia Biblica in the attention it pays to the deeper teaching of Scripture. Its articles are always designed to explain the spiritual significance of the books discussed, as well as the problems of their composition. Nothing, again, could be more valuable than the articles on Biblical Theology, which are not only well done, but by their very numbers aid the student to keep the proportion of faith before his mind: with the Encyclopaedia Biblica for his guide he will be constantly in danger of forgetting this. These two aids to Biblical study remind us, indeed, of a painting and a photograph of some stately cathedral, the one made by a skilful artist, the other by an unskilful photographer. In the one the artist has so interpreted the building that the harmony of details, the correspondence of matter with spirit, the contrivances of construction with beauty of design, the meaning of lofty arches and soaring vault, is borne in upon the spectator, and he learns how a Divine power has guided the minds and hands of generations of builders to raise a structure in which those who worship

shall draw near to Heaven. In the other the perspective is all wrong, and, though the bases of the columns and all the lower parts of the building seem to be represented with a kind of accuracy, yet in fact even these are not only exaggerated but falsified, while all the upper parts, the height of columns, the arches, and the roof, are shrunk and appear to be toppling down in meaningless disorder.

One final quotation must be made from Dr. Stanton's: thoughtful article in Hastings on Will, for it embodies thetrue principles of Biblical criticism.

'In contrast with all [these opinions] alike, we would place the belief-justified, as we contend, by particular declarations of Scripture, and still more by a comprehensive view of the Divinetraining of man, which finds its clearest interpretation in the Biblethat no human spirit is left destitute of the life-giving visitations of the Divine Spirit, and that, rudimentary as that moral and spiritual life may be which at first He has sought or seeks to create and to foster, e.g. in the savage or in many even of those who live in Christian lands, no bounds can be set to the growth which may, and which He intends should, result in this world or another, wherever the human will is consentient. This is consistent with our ideas of justice, while at the same time it recognises man's absolute dependence always upon God's grace, and can afford man no ground for claiming merit in the sight of God; for there can be no merit in his allowing himself to be saved, though he may justly expose himself to blame and loss if he frustrates God's merciful design. Further, it does not lower the supernatural to the level of the natural, though it treats that which is often called mere natural goodness as itself the outflow of a supernatural life, and as one of the lower stages, it may be, in an ascent to the highest saintliness.'

This fine passage teaches us how Holy Scripture is subject indeed to criticism. Conscience as well as scholarship tries it, and again and again the result is that its truth is brought into clearer light. Accuracy of detail may sometimes be disproved; in other words, it is found that while these writings do express the truth they are designed to express, they are not designed to satisfy all human curiosity. At the same time their standing so many tests puts them into a position of authority. Conscience and scholarship try them, but are themselves held in check by them, and if conscience

and scholarship are the instruments of the Church's judgments, it follows that the old-fashioned doctrine of the Articles of Religion is as good a rule for criticism as can be devised.

ART. VIII.-EDUCATION AND RELIGIOUS

LIBERTY.

1. State Intervention in English Education. By J. E. G. DE MONTMORENCY, B.A., LL.B. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1902.)

2. Pastors and Teachers. By the Right Rev. EDMUND ARBUTHNOTT KNOX, D.D., Bishop of Coventry. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1902.)

3. Thoughts on Education. By MANDELL CREIGHTON, D.D., &c., sometime Bishop of London. Edited by LOUISE CREIGHTON. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1902.)

4 Religio Laici. By the Rev. H. C. BEECHING, M.A., Professor of Pastoral Theology at King's College, London, and Chaplain to the Hon. Soc. of Lincoln's Inn. (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1902.)

5. The Pilot, May 17, 1902; and other numbers.

6. Reply to Mr. Balfour's Address to the Deputation of the National Free Church Councils. By J. HIRST HOLLOWELL. And other National Free Church Council Leaflets. 7. The New Volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. XXVII. 'Education.' By Sir J. G. FITCH, M.A., LL.D. (London: The Times, Printing House Square, 1902.) 8. The British South Africa Company. Reports of the Administration of Rhodesia. (Printed for the information of Shareholders.)

THERE was a time when the problem of religious toleration seemed to be very simple. So long as the chief principles of our political philosophy were drawn, consciously or unconsciously, from Benthamite sources, so long as it was assumed