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I incline to the view that this position has received its deathblow from the modern study of the history of religions; and the theologian of the present and future will be obliged to distinguish more clearly than his predecessors between the primitive origin and the permanent validity of the various factors of thought and practice which constitute historic Christianity." (Earlier Epistles of S. Paul, pp. 385, 389.) Of the Eucharistic teaching in I. Corinthinians 10-11 Dr. Lake says: "It is impossible to pretend to ignore the fact that much of the controversy between Catholic and Protestant theologians has found its centre in the doctrine of the Eucharist, and the latter have appealed to primitive Christianity to support their views. From their point of view the appeal fails: the Catholic doctrine is much more nearly primitive than the Protestant." This judgment is as gratifying as surprising, but Dr. Lake proceeds to qualify his tribute to Catholicism by two subtle and deadly sentences: "But the Catholic advocate in winning his case has proved still more: the type of doctrine which he defends is not only primitive, but pre-Christian. Or, to put the matter in terms of another controversy, Christianity has not borrowed from the Mystery Religions, because it was always, at least in Europe, a Mystery Religion itself." (Ib., p. 215.) To Lake's critical scrutiny, therefore, S. Paul stands forth a Catholic. He admits this again in a significant note: "I was much interested lately to hear the obiter dictum of one of the foremost representatives of the Dutch school to the effect that the Epistles were imbued with the Catholic spirit, and (it was implied), therefore, could not be primitive. The Dutch school represents a keen and independent criticism of the Protestant view that Catholic Christianity is a degenerate form of Primitive Christianity. It sees that the Epistles belong to Catholic Christianity, and agrees that they are, therefore, late. The true conclusion is that Catholic Christianity is, therefore, primitive." (Ib., pp. 424-5.)

Further proof of the general recognition of the Catholic nature of S. Paul's teaching concerning the sacraments is to be found in a series of articles which have appeared during the past year in the Expositor. The first, and perhaps the most remarkable, of these is by Professor H. T. Andrews on the Place of the Sac

raments in the Teaching of S. Paul. (November, 1916.) The article begins with a frank admission that modern Free Church theologians have ignored S. Paul's sacramental teaching. Recent criticism, however, is against them, and the attack is all the more significant because it has come from scholars who cannot be suspected of the slightest bias towards sacramentarianism. This, Professor Andrews realizes, is a serious problem for Free Church theology, which regards sacraments as merely symbolical. He therefore proceeds to examine the Epistles from this point of view. Concerning Baptism he concludes that "if the Epistles of S. Paul do not enunciate the ecclesiastical doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, they at any rate approximate very closely to it-with this difference, of course, that there is no need of real proof that Baptism was ever administered to infants in the Apostolic Age." One may pardon a Free Church theologian for the stubborn defence of the latter proposition in view of the surrender involved in the former. Concerning the Eucharist his conclusion is that "to S. Paul the bread and wine of the Eucharist are not merely emblems of the sacrifice that was once offered for the sins of the world; they are the vehicles by means of which the virtue of that sacrifice is appropriated by the participant." Finally Professor Andrews decides that "the Sacramentarian interpretation of S. Paul has won a decisive victory, and the Symbolical school has been driven off the field." Two alternatives, he thinks, are left for the Free Churches: to revise their conception of the sacraments, and thereby perhaps (and this I think, is very significant, as showing Protestants' need of the sacraments) enrich their spiritual life, or to recognize the nonChristian elements in S. Paul. The dilemma is left unsolved. One feels that the writer, being a Christian, inclines toward the former alternative.

His articles called forth a reply, violent though somewhat impotent, from Professor A. T. Robertson (February, 1917). Professor Andrews, he asserts, has fallen into the vice of the historico-critical method and has read into S. Paul's language the ideas of Mithraists and of later sacramentarians. There are, to be sure, sacramental passages in the Epistles, but they must be interpreted in the light of S. Paul's real spirit. This

spirit, of course, is Professor Robertson's spirit, the spirit of Protestantism. Modern Christians, he is sure, are not going to accept sacramentarian Christianity, but it is not yet necessary for them to throw S. Paul overboard.

The controversy has reappeared more recently in an article by Maurice Jones on Pauline Criticism in the Present Day. (July, 1917). This contains a summary of the question which may be quoted: "One very interesting result of this type of criticism is that it is now becoming very generally recognized that S. Paul was a thorough-going Sacramentalist. A great Presbyterian scholar like Sir William Ramsay accepts this view, and a very remarkable article appeared in the Expositor of November, 1916, by Professor H. T. Andrews of Aberdeen, in which he declared himself a complete convert to the opinion that for S. Paul the ordinances of Baptism and the Eucharist were sacraments in the complete sense of that term and not mere symbols, as is held by most Presbyterians and by a large section of the Protestant world. Whether this is a matter for gratification or not depends whether we believe, with the advanced critic, that S. Paul's sacramentalism was due to the influence of the Mystery Religion upon him or whether we hold to the view that it was inherent in the religion of Christ and the Apostles." This, it seems to me, states the issue admirably.

This paper has dealt chiefly with the Epistles. That was inevitable, because it is about S. Paul that the controversy rages— or, we may rather say, has raged, for it would seem to be ending with decisive victory for the sacramentarians. With the Gospels the case is not so clear. It must be admitted that the problem is more difficult, because the data are not so numerous or so positive. Hence there is less agreement among scholars. In fact it may fairly be said that there is no agreement, on this as on many points, for modern critics may always be counted upon to disagree with each other as violently and acrimoniously as they disagree with the Church. But from the welter of conflicting opinions concerning the sacraments in the Gospels certain conclusions are emerging. Goguel, for example, in his very radical treatment of the early history of the Eucharist, admits that in S. Mark and the Synoptic tradition the account of the Last Sup

per is clearly that of the institution of a rite or sacrament. The idea of communion, he asserts, far from being absent in the Johannine writings, is more prominent there than in the synoptic narrative. In a note on S. John VI. he says that in general Catholic exegesis and that of the critical school adopts the Eucharistic interpretation, while conservative Protestants reject it. The same is true, I think, of Baptism in S. John III. Liberal critics insist, of course, that this sacramental teaching in S. John's Gospel represents a later stage in Christian thought, but, as in the case of S. Paul, they admit that the New Testament teaches Catholic doctrine concerning the sacraments.

The recognition of this fact, even by unwilling witnesses, is something, it seems to me, in which Catholic Churchmen may well rejoice. The issue is gradually being made clear. Thinking men must choose between the rationalistic critic and the Church. Protestant compromise is growing increasingly difficult. As regards the sacraments and the New Testament, men may take both or neither, but not one. As regards our Lord, they may either accept Him or reject Him. But if they accept Him they must submit to the Church He founded, believe her doctrine and live her life. And that doctrine and that life are now, as always, sacramental.

A nation fighting to keep the world safe for democracy must in character and action be true to democracy. Racial strife, class antagonism, impurity and intemperance wreck civil liberty. Before we can conquer injustice and inhumanity in others, we must first overcome them in ourselves. Our guilt in these respects we must acknowledge with shame. We expect of our soldiers and sailors concentration of thought and action, selfdiscipline, courage and serenity under stress. We can demand no less in ourselves. In humility and sincerity we must live by the principles for which we fight. National character gives thrust and force to the national army. The war with all its suffering and loss may prove a blessing if it rouses us from indifference to religion, to spiritual concerns and moral issues, which threatens our very life.

The Pastoral Letter of the Bishops.

Monasticism and the Word Crisis
BY RALPH ADAMS CRAM, LITT.D., LL.D.

L

IKE all the manifestations of natural forces, like the pulsing of the life-blood, like life itself, history is a system of vast vibrations, systole and diastole beating eternally, but with nodes that are separated not by fractional seconds, but by intervals of five centuries. From the day of the Incarnation, back through Europe, Asia, Africa, until chronology merges in myth and tradition, and on, even to this day, and so forward until the End, this enormous vibration controls and conditions man, and he plays his part on the rise, the crest or the descent of the wave, helpless to change its course or to avert its fall.

The fable of evolution, the delusion of continuous progress, the dream of the final perfectibility of man on earth, break down and die under the hard light of universal catastrophe, vanishing with all the other illusions of modernism that have made that catastrophe not a ghastly accident but an expiation and a potential redemption, while blinding the world to its implacable approach. For the individual there may be progress, but the rise from birth to maturity is followed by declension to the grave. For the community or the state there may be progress, but the upward sweep of the elan vital curves at last, in its brief trajectory, to merge against in the inert mass through which it sprung, and the jungles of Asia, the sands of African deserts, the forests of Europe hide the forgotten shards of universal civilizations whose names are words only, and whose deeds are of the dust that buries their monuments. For mankind itself, there may be progress, out of periodical misery and oblivion, upward to honour and dignity and worth and power, but always the parabola traces its dying fall, and this spurt of progress lasts not five centuries, beyond which term nothing may pass without failure, extinction, and supersession.

History is a series of resurrections, for the rhythm of change is invariable. Each epoch of five hundred years follows the same monotonous course, though made distinctive by new variations. Since the Christian Era Imperial Rome has risen and

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