testimony of the Virgin Mary, the only possible human wit ness to the fact in question, had nothing to do with the faith of the first believers, and it is not the decisive factor in evoking our faith to-day. It behooves the apologist to turn the minds of doubters away from the miracle of the birth of Jesus to the miracle of His personality, and to get them to consider, not how parthenogenesis may be possible, but how "the character of Jesus forbids His possible classification with men (Bushnell).

The preacher whose sermon we have quoted does not follow this sane and scriptural course, but attempts to cow unbelievers by means of a battery of scientific facts. We do not object to a proper use of an analogy from nature as an illustration or suggestion to thought. But what does the instance adduced amount to? Loeb, we hear, has succeeded in fertilizing the eggs of a sea-urchin by means of a solution of the chloride of magnesium. This is rather a surprising discovery. A law hitherto unknown to science has been established. Scientists are once more admonished to be modest in their generalizations and cautious in their declarations of what is possible and what is not possible. But after all we have here no miracle,-only a new datum to be fitted into our scheme of natural law,-by no means an instance of transcending the laws of nature." If the preacher himself finds his own faith strengthened or expects honest doubters to find peace and comfort in a biological experiment, he is as incorrigible a rationalist as ever Paulus was, and is out of place in the pulpit. In the whole history of preaching it would be hard to find a more striking instance of bathos than this degradation of the mystery of our Lord's adorable person to the level of an embryological phenomenon.

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," said the poet. This may be paraphrased: it is dangerous to know little things. Surely it is well that some men have the patience to study the lowest forms of life. Such knowledge may be edifying and useful in its way. It might do the theologians

good if they knew more of the works of God in nature. But, in the words of the same poet, "the proper study of mankind is man." The man of the poet and theologian is a child of God and of a different order from the "plantigrade biped mammal" of the scientists. The higher world is beyond the reach of the scientific method that is adapted to the lower. We respectfully request our biologically-minded brethren to desist from trespassing on ground that does not belong to them.

C. N.

VII.

NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH, OR THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST AS THE LORD HATH COMMANDED, AND AS THIS CHURCH HATH RECEIVED THE SAME ACCORDING TO THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD. By Alexander V. G. Allen, Professor in the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge. Pages xiv + 223. New York, The Macmillan Co., 1907. Price $1.50 net. This volume is a tract for the times. It was called forth by the present theological situation in the American Episcopal Church. The author feels that the cause of religious freedom is in jeopardy. "This freedom," he says, " is called in question when an interpretation is placed upon the vows of the Ordinal, foreign to their original intent, as if they were a business contract with a corporation in accordance with whose terms the clergy resign their freedom in Christ for certain material considerations, instead of a guarantee of Christian freedom, as in the intention of the Reformers they were meant to be." One of the issues, in which the matter of freedom of theological inquiry is involved, is the interpretation or misinterpretation of the Virgin-birth. The difficulty in reference to this question is "not wholly created by the higher criticism' or engendered solely by scientific distrust of the miraculous." The source of the trouble is found in the history of theology in the ancient Church. In a single sentence the author clearly states his view of the subject as follows: "It was through misinterpretation of the Virgin-birth and the undue prominence assigned to it that the transition was made to the sterile form of Byzantine Christianity or to the impotency of the Latin Church in the ages preceding the Reformation." One might expect a denial of the Virginbirth after such a statement by the author. On the contrary he says: "It is accepted as the miraculous or supernatural mode by which God became incarnate in Christ, as the resurrection and the empty tomb mark the exodus of Christ from the world." does, however, contend against misinterpretations of the Gospel of the Infancy or against arguments used for its support which not only go beyond God's Word written, but give to it a prominence which changes the perspective of the Christian faith as revealed in Scripture.

He

Since he writes as a member of the Episcopal Church and discusses the theological situation in that church, doubtless as brought to light in the Crapsey controversy, he defines in the first chapter the ruling principles of the Anglican Church in the Age of the Reformation; and in the remaining six chapters he

sets forth the historical variations in the interpretation of the creed, the vows of the clergy and clerical honesty, and the history and significance of the interpretation of the Virgin-birth.

6:

With a clearness and comprehensiveness, such as one would expect from Dr. Allen, he differentiates the Anglican Church from the Roman Church and from the Puritan churches. He denies the charge that Anglicanism is either a baptized Paganism or a diluted Romanism. "Romanism and Puritanism," he says, are more closely related in their deeper spirit to each other than is the Anglican Church related to either." He finds the ruling ideas of the Church of England in the Book of Common Prayer. They may be summarized as follows: (1) The doctrine of a universal and a potential redemption of humanity in Christ, expressed in the words of the Church Catechism, "I learn to believe in God the Son, who hath redeemed me and all mankind.” Here is a fundamental difference between the particularism of Augustinianism and Calvinism and the universalism of Anglicanism. (2) The undogmatic character of the Anglican formularies. The Christian verities are stated in the language of religion and of life, rather than of theology. (3) The supremacy of the Scriptures over the creeds. (4) The prominence of the laity in the Church. "The Church of England is preeminently a layman's church, more so than any other church in Christendom." Without entering into an argument, we enter a protest against this claim. (5) The use of the Book of Common Prayer as a means of education, of enlightenment, and of Christian nurture. (6) The absence of a reactionary tendency such as appeared in the Reformed Church and to a certain extent also in the Lutheran Church. (7) The acceptance of the Bible as the Word of God without a theory of inspiration or a dogma as to the mode of composition of the various books, their date or their authorship.

In a statement of the ruling principles of any protestant church one will naturally emphasize certain elements that are common to all. But the author's definition of the essence of Anglicanism is as noteworthy for what it omits as for what it contains. He strikes the dominant notes of protestantism though he varies in the emphasis he puts upon them. Yet if Dr. Allen truly describes Anglicanism, the possibility of closer fellowship between that church and the other historic protestant churches may not be so far distant as one is inclined to imagine. We doubt, however, whether the members of his own communion would agree with the author. After showing how the Apostles' Creed originated and how the interpretation of the several articles varied from time to time, the claim is made that the "Anglican Church has provided no authoritative commentary on the Creed specifying what interpretation shall be given of its separate

clauses, with the exception of the important authoritative statement in the Church Catechism, as to what is to be "chiefly learned from the Creed," which reads as follows: "First, I learn to believe in God the Father, who hath made me and all the world. Secondly, in God the Son, who hath redeemed me and all mankind. Thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me and all the people of God." The details of the creed are left to the individual judgment, guided by Scripture, to determine. Everywhere a variety of belief has existed on these subordinate details. The emphasis which is put on the uniformity of interpretation of each article he attributes to a revival of the "Catholic tradition" within the Church. We shall quote at some length his description of two elements in the Anglican Church because the same parties are found in American protestantism generally. "There are many upon whose conscience and intellect the details of the creeds do not press heavily. They are aware in reciting them that part of their content makes no appeal to their spiritual nature. They take them in a large and general, undogmatic way, as a whole, rather than part by part. They have imbibed the teaching of the Church Catechism that the creeds present God's fatherhood, Christ's leadership by which he delivers humanity, and the inward presence of a Holy Spirit with His sanctifying influence. They would fain escape from the suggestion of controversy which the creeds carry as an atmosphere, into the undogmatic, the purer air of Holy Scripture, before the baleful controversies began. They are aware that interpretations and inferences connected by tradition with the creeds are alien to their higher spiritual instincts and tend to lessen the freedom wherewith Christ hath made us free."

6

Such as these, and they are many, are closer to the purpose of our formularies than those who seek to rivet the chains of the 'Catholic sense' upon the freer spirit of Anglican piety; they hear with a curious surprise that if they do not take each separate phrase in a fixed meaning, as the Catholic sense' has determined, that they are recreant to their vows, perjurers, dishonest, eating the Church's bread while denying its faith. they have not so learned the Anglican Church nor were they aware that such dangers lay in their path, when as children, being now come to the years of discretion, they professed the Christian faith at Confirmation."

But

In the latter part of the book the interpretation of the Virginbirth is historically presented. No allusion to the doctrine is found in the Apostolic preaching. In the tradition, which Paul received from those who preceded him and which he records in I. Cor. 15: 1-8, nothing is said of the birth of Christ. The death and the resurrection are the subjects of the apostolic mes