ance, together with their fertile resourcefulness, all find ample opportunity for application to the manifold and often perplexing problems which continually arise in the congregation and in the church at large. Let me guard against being misunderstood here. I would not lead any one to infer that only men of wealth possess these qualities; but I mean that almost invariably men of wealth do possess them. And it is but right that the church should profit, as she often has profited, by the readiness and liberality with which men of wealth give their valuable time and experience to her service.

The church as an institution among men, having manifold and varied activities, requires a material equipment which is frequently quite expensive. Probably never before could men of wealth find better or more worthy opportunities to use their wealth as well as themselves to meet the requirements of the day for adequately equipped churches, schools, orphanages, hospitals and the like. Surely never before were all forms of benevolent activities supported so liberally as at present; nevertheless, the present should be but an earnest of what is still in store for the future. Men of wealth have been liberal in the past, are liberal in the present, and can and should be still more liberal in the future in their financial support of the church and all her agencies. To the credit of, and in justice to, the rich let me say that I believe that a genuine appeal to a man of wealth for the support of anything of which he can be shown the need and reasonableness is scarcely ever made in vain.

In conclusion, first, both the church and men of wealth must learn to use a true standard of values in estimating the real worth of wealth. Even wealth may be bought at too high a price, as the following incident proves:

"Clara," asked a lady of an old school friend whom she was visiting, "how is your husband getting on?" "Miserably," answered the wife. "Why, how is that? Isn't he making a lot of money?" "Oh, yes," answered the wife, "John is making a lot of money. Some people call him rich, but I

call him poor. When we began life, we read together; we had our church; we had our social hours with friends. Now John has sold himself to work. He has no evenings. He has no Sunday. He puts everything back into his business and puts all of himself into it, and is a perfect slave."

Second, both must cultivate a keener sense of responsibility for the truest and wisest use of wealth. I believe that the wealthy need a stronger desire to see their money do good while they live. This would often obviate the frustration of cherished purposes after death.

Third, probably above everything else the crying need to-day for both is a decided raise in the standard which is to decide between legitimate and illegitimate methods of acquiring wealth. Whilst this presents a wonderfully difficult and complex problem, yet its difficulty dare not deter us from making honest efforts to solve it.

For the realization of these three things we must have the fullest coöperation and confidence between the church and the best men of wealth, and both must be ready to follow the guidance of the Spirit of the Great Master.

ESTERLY, PA.

VIII.

CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS AND THEOLOGICAL THOUGHT IN GREAT BRITAIN AND AMERICA.

BY THE REV. A. S. WEBER, D.D.

THE ORIGINALITY OF JESUS.

One of the most notable characteristics of current religious and theological literature is the multiplied number of books dealing exclusively with the teachings of Jesus. We have all read Wendt, and Nicoll, and Horton, and Ross, and Stevens, and Gilbert, and others' contributions to the varied phases of this interesting and important discussion; and from present indications the body of this literature is so far from completion that we shall probably be invited to read what many others will have to say on the subject. Widely differing interpretations are put by scholars upon this or that particular recorded saying of our Lord. Amid those differences one is struck, however, in finding one point of general if not universal agreement in their conclusions. At least so far as the outward letter of those teachings is concerned, the utterances of Jesus can be paralleled from earlier existing sources. On the score of terminology, it is affirmed, the originality of Jesus as a religious teacher cannot be maintained.

"It should be said immediately," says one of the more recent writers on the question, "that it is hard to prove that Jesus introduced any absolutely new religious conceptions. He himself felt that he was not revolutionizing, but completing. He was conscious of breaking at serious points with the religion of his times, but he was also insistent that the religion of his times was a degenerate form of the religion of the Old Testament. To the teachers of his day he said, 'Ye have made the Word of God of none effect through your tradition.'

The Old Testament was his refuge in temptation, and the keeping of its commandments was the method he recommended to obtain eternal life. In it we find the central truths of his gospel either clearly uttered by some rare man, or at least suggested."*

Upon first blush, confident assertions of this nature will doubtless seem somewhat rash and venturesome if not wholly unwarranted by ascertainable facts on record in the Hebrew Scriptures. The author anticipates this, and proceeds to justify his position. "If we think of Jesus as demanding mercy rather than sacrifice," he observes, "we find he was anticipated by Amos and Micah; if we think of him as emphasizing the love of God rather than the struggles of man after righteousness, we find Hosea doing the same; if we find him rejoic ing in present personal trust on God rather than in the expectation of national purification and supremacy, we can say no less of the author of the twenty-third Psalm; if we realize that he lived in an inner and eternal world, we see in the seventythird Psalm the ecstasy of one of the earliest venturesome believers in immortality, and we find the belief in immortality widespread among the Jews when Jesus came; if we think of his wonderful declarations of the fatherly attitude of God, we find a dim suggestion of it in Isaiah, as applied to a group of Israelites, though for a clear belief in it as applied to individuals we must look to the Apocrypha; if, finally, we remember his summary of the moral law and his refusal to separate the love of God from the love of man, we discover an unusually close parallel in Jeremiah's summary of Josiah's life, which he addressed to Josiah's scoffing son: 'Did not thy father eat and drink and do justice? then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well with him. Was not this to know me, saith the Lord?' It is no wonder that Jesus said, 'I am come not to destroy, but to fulfill.'"

"The Religious Value of The Old Testament," by Ambrose White Vernon. T. Y. Crowell and Co., New York, 1907.

A stronger test as to the validity of the position maintained by indicating general resemblances between the teachings of Jesus and the lofty conceptions of Hebrew seers, can be applied to the problem by making the definite inquiry, What are the basal doctrines, distinctively new, which we owe to the great Teacher come from God? Is the doctrine of the divine Unity one of them? That is the central truth of the Israel's religion. Is the doctrine of a merciful Providence one of them? That is the keynote of the great hymn which Jews sang long before Jesus' advent,-"The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want." Did Jesus originate the doctrine of the Deity's spirituality? That was distinctly emphasized by him who ages earlier asked, "Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Whither shall I flee from thy presence? Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me." It was not the doctrine of the Holy Spirit acting upon and communing with our spirits, invigorating and purifying the fountains of our life, for that is implied in the prayer, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me!" It was not the doctrine of the continuance of life after death, for the class among the Jews marked off by disbelief of this, were reminded by Jesus that the words they used implied the truth of what they denied, "God is not the God of the dead but of the living!" It was not the doctrine of the universal Fatherhood, for "God created man in his own image,” and as Paul acknowledged, heathen poets dwelt upon the fact that man was a divine offspring, and that the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding. It was not the docrtine of free grace and merciful forgiveness, for what language could make this plainer than that which for generations had been spoken in the ears of every child of Abraham, "Let the wicked forsake his ways, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God for he will abundantly pardon.' It was not the doctrine that there is no acceptable worship apart from spiritual service, for did not the penitent Psalmist