(ii.) The Earliest Christian View of the Bible; (iii.) The Modern View of the Bible; (iv.) The Kingdom of God; (v.) The Doctrine of God; (vi. and vii.) Christian Ethics; and finally (viii.) The Motive Power of Christianity.

Dr Drummond's treatment of his subject is necessarily limited in scope, and the way in which, with a few bold strokes of the pen, he sets forth some of the noblest features of elemental Christianity is admirable. Yet one cannot but feel some surprise, not to say disappointment, that neither the death nor the resurrection of our Lord finds any place within his self-prescribed limits.

In the first Lecture it is inferred that the notion of a Church entered very little, or not at all, into Christ's teaching, and that there is no evidence that Jesus made His apostles the nucleus of a society which was to be constituted under fixed rules, and placed under the direction of a hierarchy. Yet the Church may truly be said to have been founded by Christ, in the sense that it was the unpremeditated consequence of His life and doctrine. "We must conclude then," says Dr Drummond, "that even if Jesus did not constitute the Church by any express command, still its formation is a genuine and inevitable outcome of the Christian principle, and in this sense we may speak of Christ as the Founder of the Church."

The idea of a sacred order, clerical or sacerdotal, " is quite alien to the original principles of Christianity." Yet inasmuch as every society requires officers for the direction and administration of its affairs, and such an organisation, agreeable to the system which has prevailed in the largest sections of the Church ever since, arose out of practical necessities at an early period, "it is perfectly legitimate, and runs counter to the primitive Gospel only when it lays claim to a special divine authority, and invests its officers with clerical or sacerdotal functions "-two statements which we venture to think hard to reconcile.

66

With regard to the sacraments, Dr Drummond's conclusion is also of a negative character. "It is impossible to prove," he says, "that Christ formally constituted them a part of His religion for all time." Even if the words [This do in remembrance of Me'] were used, they were spoken simply to the disciples then present, and there is nothing to suggest their application to the followers of Christ for all time."

In the second Lecture, speaking of the early Christian views of the Bible, Dr Drummond attempts to show that though Jesus did not, like Marcion, out of repugnance to some portions of its teaching, place Himself in revolutionary antagonism to it, yet He felt that the presence and operation of God in the making of the Old Testament were no guarantee of its infallibility, for they were

seen through the dimness of human vision, and the divine message was expressed through the halting forms of human speech. Discrimination was necessary."

Alluding to the modern position with regard to the Bible (Lect. iii.), whether it be Old or New Testament, Dr Drummond says, "The ground on which men thought they stood has vanished beneath their feet, and the value of the Bible as a mere external authority is gone, for we can no longer assume that a statement is true simply because it is between the covers of the venerable book." Yet, on his own confession, men crave the support of some authority; all but the very strongest souls seek the support of something that lies outside their own feeble, partial, and isolated lives. But where does such an authority lie? Dr Drummond would appear to regard the religious instinct of the individual as the final test of truth. "The highest authority is found when truths come straight to the soul, and receive that inward response without which religious truth is dead and useless."

All which may be very true; but if this is the only guide, it is an uncertain guide, and one which has led men into every kind of error. Dr Drummond says in one place, pertinently enough, “It may be true that the pure in heart shall see God," but it is lack of this very purity in heart which makes external authority a necessity for us. It is because we cannot see God that we require someone or something to tell us, authoritatively, what He is. this we have the weak point in the system to which he adheres— that it fails to give the soul that external, yet elevating and certain, authority which we who believe in the Godhead of Jesus Christ possess in His words.

In

But here we may make an end of Dr Drummond's negative positions. From Lecture iv. onwards we have far more positive teaching. In Lecture iv. there are some admirable passages, and for Lectures vi. and vii., which deal with Christian Ethics, we have nothing but praise. On the one hand, they cannot but be inspiring (as also a passage on pp. 36, 37) to all ministers of religion, and on the other hand, they must compel all of us to ask whether after all we do not need to re-echo the words of St Ignatius, “Let us learn to live according to Christianity!"

Lecture viii, is perhaps the most disappointing in the book, and it is here that the influence of the school to which Dr Drummond belongs becomes most felt. He discusses the "Motive power of Christianity," and finds it in three things. Firstly, in 'the power of ideas': "It cannot be denied that ideas themselves, when embraced with hearty faith, possess a life-giving efficacy, and he who discovers or enforces some great spiritual truth, and makes it a reality within the minds of men, stands in the front rank of the world's bene

factors." Secondly, in 'the power of Christ's personality': "It may be said, we might have an historical interest in the Founder of Christianity; but if we had never heard of Him, the truth which He announced would remain, and our religion would be uninjured. I would speak with all respect of this view, and not call in question for a moment the genuine Christianity of those who hold it; for we all have imperfect experience and imperfect thoughts, and the defect is now on this side and now on that. Nevertheless I am sure that the great mass of believers would feel that it gave a very inadequate account, I do not say of ecclesiastical dogmas, which have been handed down for centuries, and do not always correspond to the present state of living conviction, but of what passed in their own souls when Christianity first took possession of them, and gave shape and colour to their lives, or of what has remained with them as its unrivalled and unique power. To them Christianity without Christ would be something fundamentally different from that by which they have lived." Thirdly, in the power of the Church as a community': "Into the brotherhood of seeking and consecrated souls a man may enter, and find the strength of holy association, and the uplifting power of heavenward thought and purpose . . . and in cutting themselves off from religious communion with their fellows, men not only kill a natural yearning of the Christian heart, but separate themselves from a source of inward life and power."

With all this we heartily agree. Nevertheless we ask, "What lack we yet?" It is the knowledge of the true divinity of our Lord. Jesus Christ is undoubtedly a magnificent example, but if He is not Divine, His example chills rather than inspires us. We love His gentleness, His purity, His perfect humanity, but if He is only human we feel that He is too far above us. We cannot reach the height of His holiness-and discouraged we faint. No! what we want is a love that is mighty to save-mighty because by reason of its Godhead-it carries a power with it that is more than human and stronger than death. Here is the weakness of Dr Drummond's book. But in spite of the defect it is a book which all will do well to read, and in which all will find, and cannot but find, much that is fresh, much that is inspiring. Dr Drummond dedicates the Lectures "to all of every name and church who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity." To such we too can commend a volume which, though open to serious criticism, has been helpful to ourselves. F. B. AMBROSE WILLIAMS.

Gesammelte Aufsätze.

Von Albrecht Ritschl.

Freiburg und Leipzig. Pp. 247.

Large 8vo. Price, M.6.

THE essays included in this volume have, with one exception—that on "Hengstenberg and the Union "—already appeared in theological periodicals, and are now collected under the careful supervision of Ritschl's son and biographer for the benefit of a wider class of readers. It had long been in the mind of Ritschl himself to make a collection of his more important papers; but this project, owing to the pressure of other duties, had never been carried out. Even now it is only a selection from his essays that is given, and the editor explains in the preface the principle on which the choice has been made. Ritschl's views on theological subjects are by this time tolerably well known; it therefore seemed desirable to give the preference to essays bearing on his doctrine of the Church, which is less generally understood, and is only partially unfolded in his great work on Justification and Reconciliation." The principal portion of the present volume, accordingly, consists of two weighty essays on the right conception of the Church-the first on "The Notion of Visible and Invisible Church," and the second on "The Foundation of Church Law in the Evangelical Notion of the Church"; and of two historical essays on "The Origin of the Lutheran Church.” With these are connected a number of other papers--one, going back to 1851, on "The Present State of the Criticism of the Synoptical Gospels"; another, the unprinted paper on Hengstenberg above referred to; a third, on The Method of the older History of Dogma"; and a fourth, on "The Two Principles of Protestantism" (the so-called formal and material).

66

The volume thus contains eight essays, necessarily of varying interest and value, but none of them without importance, if only as marking stages in Ritschl's own mental development. The essay on

Synoptical Criticism belongs to a period when Ritschl was yet an adherent of the school of Baur, but is marked by characteristic independence. Though reflecting a stage of controversy already more than forty years old, and in this sense pretty obsolete, it abounds in acute remarks and criticisms which time has justified. In view of the recent discovery of the "Gospel of Peter," one reads with curiosity Ritschl's elaborate refutation of Hilgenfield's hypothesis that this apocryphal Gospel was the basis of our canonical Mark. Ritschl struck out for the originality and independence of Mark, at a time when this view had few advocates; and for the rest holds Matthew to be dependent on Mark, and Luke to be dependent on both the

others. The really important part of the volume, however, lies, as above observed, in the discussions on the idea of the Church. Ritschl strenuously holds that the idea of the Church, like every other part of the Protestant system, must be re-shaped in the light of the Evangelical principle. He lays great stress on a right apprehension of the distinction of the visible and the invisible Church-contesting, both from the historical and from the doctrinal point of view, current conceptions on this subject, and in a second essay shows the application of his principles to Church office, and the reciprocal rights of clergy and laity (Kirchenrecht). The discussion on the visible and the invisible Church will be found on pp. 68-100, and again, in the second essay, on pp. 109-113. Ritschl first, after his manner, carefully investigates the meaning of this distinction in Zwingle (in whom it is first found, but who is shown to be dependent for his fundamental idea on Huss), in Luther and Melancthon, in Calvin, &c. He rejects the Zwinglian and Calvinistic view, which identifies the "invisible" Church with the whole body of the elect, known only to God, and attaches himself to the doctrine of Luther, whose distinction of a spiritual and inward, and a bodily and outward Christianity, he affirms to have nothing to do with the ordinary conception of invisible and visible. He argues that for the Evangelical conception of the Church nothing is more important than the right distinction and proper inter-relating of the dogmatic, the ethical, and the political marks of the Church. In the Catholic view, all other marks of the Church are submerged in the "political" (outward polity). In distinction from this, the Reformers laid stress on the "dogmatic" marks of the Church,—the Church as the fellowship of saints is recognised by the preaching of the Gospel and the pure administration of the sacraments. Yet more in accordance with the Evangelical principle is the conception of the Church as an "ethical" community, within which there is to be recognised the possibility and right of distinct confessional standpoints. This Ritschl takes to be the real outcome of Luther's teaching, and of the spirit of the Protestant confessions, and in harmony with it he draws his distinction of a visible and invisible Church. It is one and the same body -outwardly recognisable by Word and Sacrament-to which both of these predicates apply, only that it is viewed in a distinct relation under each. In its empirical historical existence (Sein), it is visible; as a moral growth and development (Werden), it is invisible. More precisely, as an object of sense, the Church is visible; but in its essential nature as a Divine institution, embodying Divine factors (Gospel and Sacraments), and existing to realise a Divine ideal, it is not an object of sense, but properly an object of "faith," and so is invisible. In strictness, it is faith alone which can apprehend it as the Church, even in its visible capacity. The Church, therefore, has an