66

66 Welcome each rebuff

That turns earth's smoothness rough,

Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!'

For this old world of ours needs bracing up, and needs it badly. It has needed it before: granted. There were times worse than these: grant this also. But we were not living then : we are living now; and the world was never before sinning against as much light as it is now, and never before was there quite so much ingenuity displayed in calling wrong things by right names and right things by wrong names. Downright honesty of speech is a pressing need of the hour. Soft and silken phraseology is covering a multitude of sins. The men who want the earth are finding persuasive and pretty reasons for it. Mercenary considerations are in danger of becoming fundamental principles. The straight line between good and evil is getting warped; and the old questions, 'Is it right?' 'Is it wrong?' are losing their grip. We are assuming a financial attitude, instead of a moral attitude, toward things. . . It is time to change, to take on a new tone, to preach righteousness, to tell men that the supreme reason for doing right is because it is right."

"We gain not heaven by a single bound,

But we build the ladder by which we rise;
And we climb to its summit round by round,
From the lowly earth to the lofty skies."

"It is one of the noblest human instincts that we cannot feel within us the glory and power of a real conviction without earnestly striving to make that conviction pass into other minds."

"Our knowledge has run ahead of our virtue. Our scientific progress is far greater than our moral progress. The platform on which society stands is all crank-sided: the scientific side is too high for the moral and religious side. I call on you, cultivators of art and preachers of religion, that you hold up your end. I know it is by far the heavier end; but the more is the reason why you should lift heartily and with a will, and, more than all, that you should lift all together."

LXXXI.-RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY AND SACRED

SCRIPTURES.

(a) Explanatory Note.

The two volumes "Ancient Sacred Scriptures of the World" and "Renascent Christianity" are designed as companion volumes. As such the Explanations which follow are common to both.

The latter volume, which has the general title "Renascent Christianity, A Forecast of the Twentieth Century," has been especially prepared in the interest of what is now everywhere known as Higher Criticism :-most inadequate it is and utterly unworthy, but yet designed, by its very imperfections, to elicit and even to compel more adequate and worthy attempts. As such it would not be complete without a setting forth of some special Methods of Criticism and of Translation such as those according to which the volume "Ancient Sacred Scriptures of the World" has been prepared.

(b) Motives.

In spirit and in general facts, though not in personal details, the following conclusion of a notable volume may serve both as Preface and Conclusion for this and its companion volume:

"I should not speak of myself personally, were it not for the desire which every reader naturally feels to know the probable motives of one who addresses him on any important topic of practical interest. Disconnected, in a great degree, from the common pursuits of the world, and independent of any party or of any man's favor, there is, perhaps, scarcely an individual to whom it can be a matter of less private concern what opinions others may hold. No one will suppose, that, if literary fame were my object, I should have sought it by such discussions as these in which I have engaged. Even among those who have no prejudices in favor of the errors opposed, much indifference and much prejudice to the subject must be overcome, before I can ex

pect such volumes to find any considerable number of readers. I have been writing, as it were, on the tombstones of those who were most dear to me, with feelings of the character, purposes, and duties of life which my own death-bed will not strengthen. I may, then, claim at least that share of unsuspicious attention to which everyone is entitled who cannot be supposed to have any other motive in maintaining his opinions, than a very serious, earnest, and enduring conviction of their truth and importance."

(c) The "retrograde movement."

Traditionalism, in its assertive and non-critical form, is just now exulting over what it calls the " scientific confirmations" of its methods in a recently published volume by a wellknown author. "It may not display a scientific temper of mind, but it is a splendid tribute to Harnack's accuracy of methods, that on all sides men accept the general conclusions arrived at in his latest work before having examined his reasoning. Of course many of those interested have held this same conclusion under the authority of tradition without regard for what criticism might say, but now, without a detailed knowledge of his argument, they feel assured that it is the conclusion of Criticism, simply because Harnack says so." Surely 't is true that a drowning man will clutch at a straw! The "straw," and the only one in the volume referred to, that can save this form of Traditionalism from going down for the "third and last time" is presented in a single sentence, by which "the colossal labor of which the book we refer to is a monument can be summed up." And what is this summing up? "The literature of the Christian Church, from the earliest writings of the New Testament canon to the time of Irenæus is proved by critical investigation to be in the main points and in most of its details, from the point of view of literary history, veracious and trustworthy.'

In spite of the "colossal labor" and the unquestioned worth of the volume thus summed up, there is in it nothing at all but unceasing and strong confirmations of what all sifters of Tradition, verifiers of History, and "higher critics"

both of the Bible and of the Church (who have called themselves Christians) from Origen, Arius, and Eusebius down to Channing, Norton, and Martineau, and from these down to all the "higher critics" of the day (who still retain the Christian name) have unanimously held and taught.-Namely, that "in the main points and in most of the details" the canonical Scriptures and other historically recognized "literature of the Christian Church" are "veracious and trustworthy" down "to the time of Irenæus."

(1) The time of Irenæus (the second century) is just the period to which unadulterated Apostolic Christianity extended, and at which strong tendencies to revert and rapid degeneration set in. Apostolic Christianity was that newborn Religion of Eclecticism presented to the world by the lips of Jesus and the pen of Paul. For a century nothing, save what those divine lips had unquestionably uttered and that truth-recording pen had unquestionably confirmed, was received or tolerated as Christianity. Then, at " the time of Irenæus," began that "falling away" and arose those "false prophets" predicted by both Jesus and Paul.

Judaism was Platonized into a "system" of Christian Dogmas; Christianity was Judaized into a "system" of Christian Ecclesiasticism and Ritual; Paganism was Christianized into an unverified and unverifiable "system" of Christian Traditionalism:-so began the "falling away." At the same time arose and, by the voice and vote of the semi-Heathen populace, prevailed the "false prophets "-Neo Platonizers, Neo Judaizers, Neo Paganizers too numerous to mention, down to those busy makers and stout defenders of that present Traditionalism which arrives at, and holds fast to, certain popularized and profitable conclusions "under the authority of tradition, without regard for what criticism might say: "-which Tradition it insists upon calling, and (under penalty of excommunication) requiring all others to call History! All this, and not Apostolic Christianity down to "the time of Irenæus," is what Higher Criticism objects to and rejects. It accepts, as it ever has accepted gladly— from the time of Origen, the first of the higher critics, down

ward-the summing up of Harnack's recent volume: that, the canonical Christian literature of the first century after the death of Jesus the Christ is "veracious and trustworthy in the main points and in most of the details." But this has no bearing-except of condemnation-upon the unverified, unverifiable, and before-that-time-unheard-of (by Jesus and the Apostles, utterly rejected) traditions which began to prevail in the Church of the third century, and have more and more widely prevailed ever since. All that Higher Criticism asks or has ever asked is that whatever is called History shall have adequate historic confirmations; and that no one shall henceforth be required-on penalty of either excommunication or of being branded as a heretic-to believe as History what has not been, by commonly accepted literary methods, historically confirmed. The " main points and most of the details" of the Bible are thus historically confirmed, and these it gladly accepts. But this does not imply the acceptance of the whole Bible in all its "points" and "details," much less the multitudinous traditions about the contents and meanings of the Bible which have come down to us from the third, fourth, and later centuries. Harnack's "retrograde movement" is well named if it be taken to imply, what doubtless it does imply, a going back to original sources and demanding that nothing shall be imposed as an essential Creed or as essential Christianity,-which is not clearly found in the canonical and historically verified records of the first century after the death of him, whom all the world acknowledges as The Founder of Christianity.

66 For

(d) Special Explanations.

every word men may not chide or pleine For in this world certain ne wight ther is That he ne doth or sayeth sometime amis.”

In issuing a new Edition of "Ancient Sacred Scriptures of the World" three special explanations are called for:

First, with reference to the re-translation of some portions of the Bible, especially of some familiar phrases and words