Christian to remain uninformed concerning the origin and nature and trend of a movement which is certain to modify Christian life and thought in every continent, and which promises to achieve greater results than any wrought by any movement since the Reformation, is an exhibition of mental stolidity and blindness of heart as inexplicable as they are unpardonable. Christ has stinging condemnation for men who count themselves religious and yet are blind to the signs of the times."

The New Theology, for which he claims such far-reaching significance, and in which, he insists, alert minds must be sympathetically interested, is often perplexing because misunderstood. "It is nothing that can be put into a book, into a definition, or into a picture. It is a movement, not a system; an emphasis, not a dogma; an atmosphere, not a creed; a method, not an attainment; a tendency, or rather a group of tendencies; a phenomenon, or rather a series of phenomena; it is a spirit, an accent, an intonation, a view-point, a vision, and not anything that can be accurately measured or satisfactorily defined. It is the scientific method applied to the study of the phenomena of religion, and by scientific method is meant the method of observation and analysis, the method which bases conclusions on observed facts and just reasonings rather than upon authority and speculation." Here again we are carried back to the age-old contentions of Schleiermacher, which in their reiterated form are once more convincingly affirmed by this learned and widely-influential exponent of his primal theological conceptions. The third lecture on the New Evangelism, by the Rev. Bishop McDowell, of the Methodist Church, need not detain us. It recognizes the changed religious conditions now obtaining as compared to former times, and the need of adapting the process of bringing the gospel to these changed conditions. It vigorously refutes the idea sometimes advanced that the new truth robs men of missionary motive or cools evangelistic zeal. Facts do not

support that notion. Many of the saintliest and most selfsacrificing men in the churches at home and in the mission stations abroad, are effectually laboring under the banners of the new creed. Where there is lack of devotion to the spread

of the Kingdom, the cause of it must be sought and found elsewhere.

BALTIMORE, MD.

VII.

EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.

RECENT THEOLOGICAL TENDENCIES IN GERMANY.

During the last two decades, no epoch-making theologian has arisen in Germany. No university professor has become a pioneer, breaking new paths and occupying new vantage ground in the solution of theological problems. The leaders of recent theological movements are to a greater or less extent the followers of the masters of the nineteenth centurySchleiermacher, Baur, Hoffmann, or Ritschl. Their energy

is expended in painstaking investigations, critical comparisons, and a vigorous propaganda of conclusions old and new. Convictions, which have been whispered for a generation in the privacy of the study, are now proclaimed from the housetops in the language of the people. The theological lines in the German church are, therefore, sharply drawn; and the battle of pamphlets reveals an astounding diversity of views in universities, pulpits, and pews.

Three comparatively recent controversies throw light on present theological tendencies. The first relates to the Apostles' Creed; the second, to the "Essence of Christianity"; and the third, to "Babylon and the Bible." In each of these conflicts an ancient bulwark of the church-the Creed, the Gospel of the New Testament, the authority of the Old Testament was in jeopardy. No wonder, then, that the German church was stirred from centre to circumference, and that the representatives of the various parties answered one another in a right Lutheran style. One keynote, however, is sounded by every writer, whether he is an orthodox confessionalist or a Social Democrat, and that is loyalty to Jesus Christ. The issue avowedly is not between Christianity and atheism, but between one or another interpretation of Chris

tianity. It is an issue in Protestantism between the ancient and the modern Welt-Anschauung (world-view); between the dogmatic method of biblical study and the historical method; between the right of the individual reason and conscience in religion and the authority of traditional institutions.

Broadly speaking, we may classify the several schools as conservative and liberal. Yet each of these circles contains such different shades of view that the periphery of the one blends with that of the other. A consistent conservative and a liberal to the uttermost are rare birds. In the twentieth century it is hard to live altogether in the sixteenth; it is harder still to die altogether to the sixteenth. Even a German theologian cannot entirely rid himself of the theological views of the centuries which preceded him.

I. Orthodoxy. After reading a number of books and pamphlets, which have come to light in the above-named controversies, we are convinced that the majority of the German preachers and laymen belong to the orthodox school. There is, however, a growing and a significant minority of liberal pastors and people. In the universities the scales tip in favor of liberalism, with a decreasing number of orthodox lecturers.* Niebergall, in a late article on Das Religiöse Denken der Gegenwart (the Religious Thinking of the Present), says: "Orthodoxy is historically first and still occupies the centre. For large circles, orthodoxy is Christianity; it shapes both the proclamation of it and the opposition to it. We must always remember how little modern conceptions have penetrated our times."+ This is the testimony of a liberal German author. Some years ago a Berlin assembly of pastors applauded the

In an article on Critical Thought in Germany, in the Bible Student and Teacher for March, 1907, Professor George H. Schodde says: "A very noteworthy factor in the whole matter is the fact that the Church at large in Germany is much more orthodox proportionately than are the theological faculties." I quote this statement in a footnote, since it appeared after this editorial was finished and agrees exactly with my

conclusions.

† Das Suchen der Zeit, p. 62.

following statement: "The history of criticism is the condemnation of criticism." In a volume entitled, Against the Infallible Science, 1887, Professor Zöckler writes: "A science, which offers us a chaos of unproved hypotheses as verified facts, cannot arouse in us any remarkable confidence in the justice and propriety of its methods." Dr. Rupprecht, in his reply to Harnack, affirms, in no uncertain tones, his belief in the verbal inspiration of the Bible, when he says: "The inspiration of the ancients has fallen, they all cry. It is a lie (Es ist Lüge). It cannot fall. It rests on the declarations of Christ as well as on those of the Apostles and on their use of the Scriptures. Men of this school take the position that the interpretation of Christianity is independent of the culture of the age. It need not be reinterpreted in the light of a new science or philosophy, for it is not affected by them. They, accordingly, condemn Harnack's defense of Christianity before the students of all faculties in the Berlin University.t They say that "he has taken out of Christianity that which is the head and front of our faith, its roots and crown. left a Christianity which is not based on facts, but on men's opinions and feelings." "Reduction," cries Cremer in his reply to Harnack, "reduction of the grace of God, reduction of our sin, reduction of our lost estate, reduction of the redeeming love of God, reduction of God's freedom; nothing but reduction is the real gospel to suffer."

He has

II. Mediationalism.-Alongside of these representatives of an inflexible orthodoxy there is a large number of a conciliatory and more tolerant disposition. These are the followers of the Erlangen theologian Hoffman and of the mediationalists of the middle of the nineteenth century. They, for example, criticize unfavorably the lectures of Harnack, yet they recognize in his Essence of Christianity a valuable apologetic of the gospel before university students. They admit that Christianity cannot be held apart from the social, intellectual and • Rolfe, Das Wesen des Christenthums, p. 27. † Lectures on the Essence of Christianity.