tradition five hundred years wide, without a scrap of history concerning him, Dr. Driver's assertion in the words italicized by us, is a piece of pure dogma destitute of the palest moonbeam of proof. It is a case of attempted mind reading across an abyss of five hundred years; an appropriate plea in defense of D against all his fellow-critics. "If the critical view of Dt. be correct," the book is not a forgery or a fiction or an invention (p. lxi); "he cannot be held guilty of dishonesty or literary fraud;" "its moral and spiritual greatness remains unimpaired; its inspired authority is in no respect less than that of any other part of the Old Testament which happens to be anonymous" (p. lxii). "The adoption of this verdict of criticism implies no detraction either from the inspired authority of Dt., or from its ethical and religious value. . . . Dt. gathers up the spiritual lessons and experiences not of a single lifetime, but of many generations of God-inspired men. It is a nobly conceived endeavor to stir the conscience of the individual Israelite, and to infuse Israel's whole national life with new spiritual and moral energy" (p. xii ff.).

Under this criticism it has become common to use terms with positive historic signification in a sense that none but the initiated understand. Moral, spiritual, ethical, inspired, God-inspired (only once used in the Bible), conscience, certainly mean something very different from the definitions of the lexicons and common use when applied to justify what every other critic of this school says is a pious fraud. We are glad that only one critic justifies their figment D in the work they have given him to do. This commentary is designed chiefly “for students and clergymen." If they accept the fundamental theory of this criticism, that its fulcrum is mere tradition in pious fraud, we hope they will have, like the European critics, the courage of their convictions and say so plainly, and save morality by denying that God ever inspired. fraud and hypocrisy.

If Dt. is what this criticism and commentary make it to be, a fiction from the mouth of God, all labor spent on it is lost. If Dt. is God's truth from God's mouth, good were it for this commentary had it never been born.

THE USE OF KINGDOM AND CHURCH IN THE NEW TESTA

MENT.

So

In our hymnology, "kingdom" and "church" are synonyms. are they in the New Testament, but with a wider range of variation. In their simpler meanings we may accept Fairbairn's remark, that "the kingdom is the immanent church, the church is the explicated kingdom." When Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, or in parables, or in passing VOL. LII. NO. 208.

II

allusion, spoke of the kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God, or simply of the kingdom, it was usually to set forth the ideal which he came into the world to make actual, but which was not yet realized.

This ideal began to be realized in the local Christian assemblies, and the apostles, both in the Acts and the Epistles, spoke much oftener of the actual, concrete church or churches, than of the ideal kingdom.

Of the twenty-one times the word "church" occurs in the book of Acts, all except ix. 31 can be understood of the local congregation, and only three or four others can possibly be taken in any wider sense. In Acts xx. 28, "the church of God which he purchased with his own blood," the word is more naturally taken of the church universal; and so perhaps viii. 3, "made havoc of the church." In ix. 31 the best MSS. leave no doubt of this use, for they read," then had the church rest throughout all Judæa and Galilee and Samaria."

The word occurs five times in the Epistle to the Romans, all in the sixteenth chapter, and always with the local meaning.

Of twenty-two occurrences in First Corinthians, only two have the distinctively larger sense: x. 32, "Give no occasion of stumbling, either to Jews, or to Greeks, or to the church of God;" xii. 28, “And God hath set some in the church, first apostles," etc. Two others may be taken in the more extended meaning: xi. 22, "or despise ye the church of God," and xv. 9, "I persecuted the church of God." In Second Corinthians, "church" occurs nine times, always of the local body. The three uses in Galatians are the same except that i. 13, “I persecuted the church of God," cannot be so readily taken of the church in Jerusalem as of the church universal. Two references in each Epistle to the Thessalonians are simply to the local church or churches.

On the other hand, the Epistle to the Philippians has one reference to the local and one to the universal church; while two of the four passages in the Epistle to the Colossians are of the church universal and glorified, calling the church the body of Christ. In the Epistle to the Ephesians this last use occurs nine times, and the local use not at all.

Thus there appears in the Epistles of Paul, and especially the later ones, a use of "church" in a meaning hardly distinguishable from that of "kingdom" in several of the parables and in such phrases as enter into the kingdom," "fit for the kingdom." Compare especially the phrase "For his body's sake, which is the church" (Col. i. 24) with "For the kingdom of heaven's sake" (Matt. xix. 12), and "the kingdom of heaven, for which ye also suffered” (2 Thess. i. 5).

In the Gospels the word "kingdom" occurs more than a hundred times. The word "church" is found in none of them, except Matthew, and there in but two passages. In Matt. xviii. 7, Christ makes the local church or congregation the final court of appeal in the case of an offending brother. In Matt. xvi. 18, Christ tells Peter, "On this rock I will build my church." Here the word "kingdom" would fit so well that Thayer does

not hesitate in his lexicon to suggest that the evangelist misreported this saying!

On the other hand, in the Acts and Pauline Epistles, exclusive of the Pastoral Epistles, “kingdom" occurs but nineteen times, while "church" is found seventy-nine times. The drift of usage was very rapid in preference of the shorter word. We know how emphasis was increasingly put on the word "church" in the post-apostolic time until the accepted saying was, "There is no salvation outside the church."

Two important inferences may be drawn from these facts.

The first is, that a time much later than the apostolic is very improbable for the production of four books like the Gospels that eschew the use of the word "church" which already in the days of the apostles had become so popular. Some evidence, also, in regard to the date of Revelation may be found in the fact that it never uses "church" in the larger

sense.

The second inference is as to the accuracy with which the evangelists reported the words of our Lord. Some, if not all, of the Gospels are later than a part, if not all, of the Pauline Epistles. What but the accuracy of their memory and the carefulness of their record can explain their persistent use of "kingdom" when in so many places "church," in the meantime already becoming current, would have fitted equally well? W. E. C. WRight.

CLEVELAND, O.

ARTICLE IX.

SOCIOLOGICAL NOTES.

CHARITY.

IN the July number, charity was considered in its relations to the gen eral law of toil. It was seen that toil is the natural lot of man; that it begets value when wisely directed, and that it begets virtue; that sloth and idleness are not negative virtues, but positive vices. Their results, like those of toil, are subjective and objective. The exceptions to the general law of toil for each and all were then noted. There were found to be the physically and mentally unsound, which brings to consideration the subject of dependents, defectives, and delinquents. A large class was found of those who are able and willing to work but cannot find employment. The suggestion of a remedy for such conditions was employment furnished by the State.

A large class who are able to work, but are unwilling and prefer to become dependents, presented a problem not so easily solved. It is simply the problem of pauperism. A false remedy was found to be indiscriminate charity. The true remedies were suggested to be in enforced industry and in education which must be largely a personal work.

But the broad question of pauperism demands a wider inquiry than is revealed through some self-evident economic axioms. While we may differ from many of our labor-union friends who find in our social conditions the entire causes of intemperance, poverty, and crime, we shall do well to heed their indictment of society as they see it to-day, and enter upon a general inquiry as to how far such a civilization as ours is responsible for the existence of a criminal and pauper class. This simply raises the question, Is the solidarity of the human race such that a contagious disease in the upper classes has become epidemic among the lower?

If pauperism is caused by social conditions, then the whole of society needs purifying, from the head to the feet. Charity, legal procedure, workshops, or even education would be like a poultice on a boil,—it would draw the bad blood out, but would not necessarily purify the system. Such would not be permanent cures. They might cure paupers, but not pauperism.

Society, being simply an aggregation of individuals, seems to resemble the individual in his periods of health and sickness, of hope and de

pression. If, then, the permanent causes of pauperism are not in the individuals that make up the class, but in the social conditions or in environment, then the environment must be changed before pauperism can be permanently eliminated. Is our social condition responsible for that disease, pauperism? It is charged by socialists and by many enthusiastic reformers that such is the case. Some find it in the overdevelopment of individualism as the economic reductio ad absurdum of the laissez faire doctrine; some in the evils of the competitive system, and others in the exploitation of the lower classes by organized capital controlling the means of production.

The causes of pauperism must not be sought in conditions peculiar to our own age or civilization, for poverty and pauperism have always existed, so far as we know, in a greater or less degree. The early church sought too largely to remedy pauperism by charity, and it soon developed into giving for subjective reasons, which is but another form of selfishness. No theory of pauperism will stand the test that ignores the freedom of the individual will and the superiority of man to his environment. This fact is as well attested as any truth or fact of human nature, and to deny it is to usher in a hopeless pessimism that is the fruit of such a fatalism.

The desire to get something for nothing is not confined to the pauper class. It is a passion as old as human nature, asserting itself alike in the millionaire no less than in the beggar and pauper. To buy a birthright for some bread and pottage of lentils has ever been the aim of the commercial instinct in human nature. Few, indeed, seem to be entirely free from it. It is a passion that has come along down through the centuries from palace and hovel, from throne and hamlet, from pulpit and pew. Its pathway, like that of so many mixed evils, has not been strewn entirely with flowers of fragrance, but with poisonous weeds, with briars and thorns.

Man is naturally a lazy and selfish animal, more ambitious that his neighbor should be altruistic than to be so himself; having fine theories and noble ideals-usually for some man, race, age, or condition other than himself or his own. Like the student who advertised for a comfortable home, with a corner suite of rooms and bath attached, where his Christian influence could pay for his board.

The idea of getting something for nothing took on shape in the doctrine of the divine right of kings. It is perpetuated in the laws of primogeniture, entailment, and royal descent. The golden rule has been true in theory, but too often false in fact. The English mode of procedure is in point. Our critical and genial friend, Mr. Stead, has written "If Christ Came to Chicago"; but the book is not yet written, "If Christ Were in England." England subjugates not to serve, but to be served. Opium is not a bad thing for China so long as it is such a good thing for England;