When the religious history of the 19th century comes to be fully understood, it will probably be found that at no period in all the long story of Christianity has the Christian faith been subjected to so great an intellectual strain. Never has it been harder for an educated man to believe that "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself," save, perhaps, in the heroic days of the Founder and His Apostles. The age of the first Apologists, in some respects, presents the closest parallel. In those days the conflict was with Hellenism, the intellectual medium created by the great thinkers of Greece, the reaction of which upon Christian faith gave us the massive system of Catholic dogma, in whose shadow the Church for many centuries lived a life comparatively untroubled by intellectual doubt. The only other epoch which can compare with the present in the respect above indicated is that of the Aufklärung of the 18th century. But brilliant and confident as was the Rationalism of the 18th century, it cannot compare for depth and strength with the negative thinking of the 19th, and is to

be viewed rather as the precursor of the graver and more formidable movement, which, in the judgment of the present writer, is now drawing near its close. How formidable that movement has been it will be part of the endeavor of the following pages to show. The attack has come from many quarters, from the new science, the new philosophy and the new historical criticism, each of which had earned the right to the respect and gratitude of men from its achievements in other spheres; and thus Christian men have had to live their week-day life in a world of industry and culture shaped and dominated by intellectual forces apparently hostile to their deepest faith.

"In our modern world," says Professor Herrmann, "Christianity is an alien," and, startling as is the expression, it is, in many respects, true. How intense has been the strain within Protestant Christianity the biographies of the thinking men and women who have lived through the period bear abounding and pathetic testimony. Carlyle, George Eliot, Ruskin, Darwin and Matthew Arnold, the story of each of these, in its own way, bears testi

vine Grace, and so we who believe in the Living God must conclude that beyond the present conflicts there must lie some great and enduring gain.

(2) The second intellectual solvent of traditional theology has been found in Philosophy. To all intents, and for all the purposes of a brief review such as this, it will be enough to assume that modern Philosophy still rests upon the work of Kant. The best expositors of Kant are agreed that his motive in elaborating the great fabric of the Transcendental Philosophy was to safeguard the interests of human freedom in the presence of the intimidating might of Nature. Although he lived before the time of the greatest scientific triumphs, Kant clearly discerned the course which inductive thought was taking. He was thoroughly abreast of the science of his day, and was himself a scientific discoverer of no mean order. He plainly foresaw what would be the results of the rise of the modern conception of Nature on the moral and spiritual life of man. His Puritan training had impressed indelibly upon him the Christian ideas of the value of the soul, the supremacy of duty and the worth of personality, and so he bent all the power of his extraordinary intelligence to the solution of the problem. "The starry heavens above," amazing him on the wide Baltic levels, as they amazed the Chaldean sages on the huge Babylonian plain, by the splendor and order of their courses: "the moral law within," the awful voice speaking to his inmost soul as to a freeman and not as to a slave,-could these two great voices, the highest and grandest that he knew, be in conflict, the one with the other? Incredible! Yet how reconcile the discord? Current philosophy afforded no adequate solution. Nothing less, Kant believed, was at stake than the spiritual life of humanity, and so he undertook and carried through the rigorous analysis

of the three great Critiques, an analysis which was at once felt to have opened a new epoch in the history of human thought. The idea that Kant was primarily a destroyer, that his analysis of knowledge was in the sceptical interest, is wholly mistaken. His aim was essentially positive; it was the vindication of the rights of the soul of man in presence of the apparent tyranny of Nature. Incidentally, it is true, he was a great destroyer. He smote the dogmatisms of his day with the hammer of Thor. No doubt his iconoclastic zeal ran to extremes, but none the less his analysis of knowledge ren dered necessary a new and deeper investigation into the old dogmatic ideas, while his positive results stand to-day in the front rank for Christian thought. Since his days Philosophy has worked mainly along the lines which he laid down. Great systems have been reared on his foundations, but Idealist and Agnostic alike own his priority, and no scheme of thought can be secure of a hearing to-day that takes no account of the Critical Philosophy.

Here again it must be said that, given the rise of Science with its conception of the Reign of Law, and given the maintenance of the Christian estimate of the value of the soul, that critical analysis was inevitable, and therefore the Christian must regard it, with all its logical consequences, as "Providential." It is as certain as anything can be that in view of the new Science, with its intimidating discoveries, the old philosophies had become inadequate for the vindication of human freedom, and that unless the Christian idea of personality was to vanish from Philosophy, a deeper analysis of the very nature of thought had to be undertaken. If it had not been done by Kant, it would have had to be done by someone else, or by a school, or by a generation, instead of by one man.

foundations of which took so long to lay, but whose upper courses have arisen with such astonishing rapidity. Our whole modern industrial and commercial world rests upon the scientific view of nature. This view forms the basis of the entire technique of production and exchange. Without it the "great industry" of our days would be impossible. All mechanical inventions, all modern navigation and agriculture depend upon its truth, and upon the thoroughness, expertness, industry and courage with which men apply its principles to the practical problems before them. All medical and sanitary science presupposes its truth. It is, in fact, part of the mental world in which we live and move and have our being.

But an essential part of that scientífic view of the world is the idea of Natural Law. The idea that Nature is uniform in her methods, that all her parts are united in one great system of causes and effects, or, at least, of antecedents and consequents; that, to put the matter anthropomorphically, she is under a Reign of Law, is postulated by all men of Science, and is accepted as axiomatic by the culture of our day. The prestige of Science at the present time is enormous. The wonder and dazzle of her theoretical achievements are still in the world's eyes, the thunder of her practical triumphs is in its ears. Legions of her specialists, working in all departments of pure and technical knowledge, diffuse her ideas through the masses, and so the educated world of to-day is permeated through and through by her principles, and tends to read all things in heaven and earth through them, just as an imaginative child sees all the world around it in the light of some new story book of absorbing interest.

real

Now, that the Scientific view of nature is quite in harmony with the religious interpretation of the world may

may be able to show that their convictions as to human freedom, the power of prayer, the individualizing Providence of God, and the new creation in Christ Jesus, are consonant with belief in Natural Law. But what we have to remember is that these convictions grew up at the first in a very different intellectual medium from that in which they must live to-day. The creative and dogmatic ages of Christianity knew little of the Uniformity of Nature, and hence the forms in which Christian thought expressed these religious convictions necessarily became inadequate as soon as Science rose to its full power. Hence arose an irrepressible conflict in which superstition and unreasoning conservatism on the side of theology, and narrowness and revolutionary bigotry on the side of science, embittered and aggravated the real difficulties which face us when we try to harmonize the religious and scientific views of the world. But while human prejudice and folly have thus entangled the controversy, the undeniable fact is that such a controversy was absolutely inevitable in any case, and therefore must have formed part of the Divine purpose. No one who believes in God can doubt that it was His Hand which opened this new volume of His Wisdom, and set His children the arduous task of reading the new knowledge into the old, and the old into the new. If we believe in His Providence in so far as the great secular events of history are concerned, it is impossible to exclude the rise of Science from the same great Counsel as is recognized in the rise and fall of empires. If we grant this, we must grant also that that same Divine Providence intended the inevitable collision between the older and the newer views of the world, with the resulting uncertainty of belief. But the Divine Providence can never conflict with the Di

vine Grace, and so we who believe in the Living God must conclude that beyond the present conflicts there must lie some great and enduring gain.

(2) The second intellectual solvent of traditional theology has been found in Philosophy. To all intents, and for all the purposes of a brief review such as this, it will be enough to assume that modern Philosophy still rests upon the work of Kant. The best expositors of Kant are agreed that his motive in elaborating the great fabric of the Transcendental Philosophy was to safeguard the interests of human freedom in the presence of the intimidating might of Nature. Although he lived before the time of the greatest scientific triumphs, Kant clearly discerned the course which inductive thought was taking. He was thoroughly abreast of the science of his day, and was himself a scientific discoverer of no mean order. He plainly foresaw what would be the results of the rise of the modern conception of Nature on the moral and spiritual life of man. His Puritan training had impressed indelibly upon him the Christian ideas of the value of the soul, the supremacy of duty and the worth of personality, and so he bent all the power of his extraordinary intelligence to the solution of the problem. "The starry heavens above," amazing him on the wide Baltic levels, as they amazed the Chaldean sages on the huge Babylonian plain, by the splendor and order of their courses: "the moral law within," the awful voice speaking to his inmost soul as to a freeman and not as to a slave,-could these two great voices, the highest and grandest that he knew, be in conflict, the one with the other? Incredible! Yet how reconcile the discord? Current philosophy afforded no adequate solution. Nothing less, Kant believed, was at stake than the spiritual life of humanity, and so he undertook and carried through the rigorous analysis

of the three great Critiques, an analysis which was at once felt to have opened a new epoch in the history of human thought. The idea that Kant was primarily a destroyer, that his analysis of knowledge was in the sceptical interest, is wholly mistaken. His aim was essentially positive; it was the vindication of the rights of the soul of man in presence of the apparent tyranny of Nature. Incidentally, it is true, he was a great destroyer. He smote the dogmatisms of his day with the hammer of Thor. No doubt his iconoclastic zeal ran to extremes, but none the less his analysis of knowledge ren dered necessary a new and deeper investigation into the old dogmatic ideas, while his positive results stand to-day in the front rank for Christian thought. Since his days Philosophy has worked mainly along the lines which he laid down. Great systems have been reared on his foundations, but Idealist and Agnostic alike own his priority, and no scheme of thought can be secure of a hearing to-day that takes no account of the Critical Philosophy.

Here again it must be said that, given the rise of Science with its conception of the Reign of Law, and given the maintenance of the Christian estimate of the value of the soul, that critical analysis was inevitable, and therefore the Christian must regard it, with all its logical consequences, as "Providential." It is as certain as anything can be that in view of the new Science, with its intimidating discoveries, the old philosophies had become inadequate for the vindication of human freedom, and that unless the Christian idea of personality was to vanish from Philosophy, a deeper analysis of the very nature of thought had to be undertaken. If it had not been done by Kant, it would have had to be done by someone else, or by a school, or by a generation, instead of by one man.

(3) The only other cause of the religious uncertainty which we are considering that need be adverted to here is the rise of the Science of Biblical criticism. This critical movement is, broadly regarded, simply a phase of the great Historical revival of the 19th century, which so competent a judge as Lord Acton1 declares to have been a deeper and more serious movement than the Renaissance itself. That Historical Movement, as the same writer points out, originated in the actions and reactions of thought created by the mightiest event of modern secular history-the French Revolution. That Revolution, as we know, had been long prepared for by the great French critics of the 18th century. They felt that a wonderful new world was coming slowly to the birth, "the world of Watt and Lavoisier," the world of the Industrial Revolution and of Modern Science. They felt instinctively that the danger was great that the weight of religious conservatism and antiquated absolutism in Church and State would smother the new world at its birth, and so they toiled with furious energy to "crush the Infamous." They were filled with hatred of the dominant past. It stood to them for superstition and tyranny, and they enlisted all the forces of their genius and eloquence and learning to destroy it. We know that they succeeded only too well. The hurricane fell, and when calm came once more, there came with it the great Romantic reaction, with its rehabilitation of Mediævalism, its passion for the past, its worship of order and authority, its detestation of the Revolution and all its works. This movement in Germany found one of its expressions in a re-awakening of Historical Science. It was countered in France by another Historical School, which, treating the Revolution as itself

1 "Study of History," p. 36. He quotes Freeman and Jowett in support of this assertion.

one of the mightiest events of history, sought to explain and justify it by more searching investigation of the conditions which produced it; and out of the conflict between these two tendencies a new epoch in history began. Savigny, Niebuhr, Ranke and others initiated a new and more thorough method of historical investigation, which was rapidly carried into all the great departments of human life. A more rig. orous standard of truth was aimed at; science reacted upon historical inquiry; the critical temper awoke to full selfconsciousness, and a new epoch began. All this, it can now be seen, was inevitable; its causes were deep-seated; it was part of the normal advance of human knowledge, and it has abundantly justified itself, as Science has done, by its practical results.

But it was also inevitable that the methods which the great historians were applying with such brilliant results to the histories and early literatures of Greece and Rome should be applied also to the sacred writings and the sacred history, inevitable, at least, in lands in which the principles of the Reformation had reached their full development. That result was not long delayed. The attack came first in Strauss's Leben Jesu from the more radical section of the Hegelian party, the same left wing which later gave Marx and Lassalle to the Social Revolution; and it was reinforced with greater learning and superior historical acumen by the famous school of Tübingen. In this formidable attack the three movements above enumerated, the Scientific, the Philosophical and the Historical, came together in one great ocean breaker. The Scientific antipathy to anything that claimed to be inexplicable in terms of law, the Philosophic antipathy to anything that could not be brought within the dialectic evolution of the Idea, coalesced with the new Critical temper in mak