ment to become corrupt, and suffer the consequences; but we can never institute any other. Supposing even that monarchy were ever so much better than democracy, how could we ever get a monarchy? Whence could we get a monarch? Would we be willing to crown any one of our living presidents, or any one of our senators-Mr. Quay, for instance or would we consent to the introduction of one of the numerous unemployed princes of the Victorian dynasty? No, monarchy may still do for a while for the English people, but for us it is impossible; and the only thing that we can do is to keep our democracy pure and honest. And they are enemies of our country who would advise or suggest any departure from the rules of democracy. We can join in honoring the queen without infidelity to the principles of our own institutions. Victoria may have been a very good queen for England, but we can use neither queen nor king.

BIBLICAL CRITICISM AND THE RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE BIBLE.

One of the charges most frequently brought against the modern science of Biblical criticism, both in its higher and lower forms, is that it is destructive. In a certain sense this charge must be admitted to be correct. The higher criticism of the Bible especially has led to some destructive results. It has destroyed certain traditional conceptions of the Bible, which heretofore have been considered essential to a proper estimate of its value. For instance, it has destroyed some of the older theories of the inspiration and composition of the Bible. The doctrine of verbal or plenary inspiration, inherited by the Church from the Synagogue, held somewhat loosely during the middle ages, and brought into prominence after the Reformation by the stress of controversy, has been pretty generally given up by the adherents of the higher criticism. In one of the seventeenth century confessions, the Consensus Tigurinus, it was maintained that not only every word and letter, but also the Hebrew vowel points and the Greek accents were immediately given by inspiration of God. Hence the

Bible in all its statements must be absolutely infallible. This theory has been overthrown by the discovery that vowel points and accents, as well as punctuation marks, were inventions of the middle ages, and that there are numerous variations and discrepancies in both Testaments, the existence of which is wholly inconsistent with infallibility. These variations and discrepancies have usually been set to the account of copyists. Copyists were not infallible; and these, therefore, may have corrupted the text by allowing errors to slip into it. But if the door to the acceptance of errors in the Bible is thus opened in one place, where shall we stop? Is not this raising spirits that may not go down at our bidding? Where is our infallible Bible after we have admitted that the copyists may have sown it full of errors?

But the higher criticism has also overthrown the received tradition concerning the composition and genuineness of some Biblical books. This tradition, too, as far as the Old Testament is concerned, was originally received from the Synagogue. According to a tract of the Babylonian Talmud, Moses wrote the Pentateuch, with the exception of the last eight verses; Joshua wrote his own book; Samuel wrote the books which go by his own name, as well as Judges and Ruth; and David wrote the Psalms, some of which, however, were composed by Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jeduthun, and Asaph. The other books were written by the men whose names are attached to them; though they were subsequently edited by Hezekiah and his friends, by the men of the Great Synagogue, and by Ezra. Now modern criticism has shown that such traditions generally are worthless. Moses, the critics say, did not write the Pentateuch. They hold that it consists of at least four separate documents, which were written at widely different times and places, but all subsequent to the age of Moses. This conclusion has been supported by proofs which to one familiar with such studies are irresistible. A like critical study of the Psalms has proven that David was not, and could not have been, their author. The author of the last twenty-six chapters of the book of Isaiah was not the historical Isaiah, but an unknown prophet who lived late in the time of the captivity;

and the book of Daniel was not composed in the time of Cyrus, but in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. In the New Testament the results of criticism have not been so sweeping, but they have been sufficiently important to cause us to modify considerably our traditional conceptions of this portion of our Sacred Scriptures. For instance, we could no longer speak of the Synoptic Gospels as three independent narratives of the life of our Lord, but must regard them rather as three variations of one tradition. So, then, it is true that modern Biblical criticism has destroyed some previously received notions of the Bible. Instead of regarding the Bible as a book of oracles, criticism regards it as a body of sacred literature, whose authors can, in many cases, no longer be identified.

But it has also destroyed certain current conceptions of religion. For instance, it has put an end to the theory that the Bible is religion, or the theory that religion consists in holding certain dogmatic truths and performing certain rites, which are infallibly revealed in the Bible. This has been called dogmatic religion. A dogma, as usually defined, is an accepted truth of divine revelation, whose contents may be theoretical or practical. Now religion is dogmatic when it consists essentially in the acceptance and confession of such truths. The channel for the revelation of such truths may be supposed to be either the Church and the Bible, or the Bible alone. In the former case we have Romanism; in the latter case we have Protestantism according to the idea of the seventeenth century. The Romanist said, in order to be religious you must accept a certain sum of religious truths; and these truths must be precisely and correctly formulated, for if they were not, your religion would not be acceptable to God. So far the Protestant of the seventeenth century, and later, agreed with the Romanist. But now the latter went farther and contended that the formulation of divine truth is the business of the Church, which uses for this purpose the Bible and tradition as coördinate sources of authority. To this the Protestant replied, no, the Bible alone is the religion of Protestants; it contains clearly and explicitly all the truths which it is necessary

for a Christian to hold; and as for getting them out of the Bible, that is the business of private judgment. Between these theories there is really not much difference; and in the light of Biblical criticism neither of them is any longer tenable. If the Bible is not an infallible code of dogmatic truths miraculously let down from heaven, but a body of literature embodying the progressive religious knowledge and experience of a people, then the theory of dogmatic religion, both in its Protestant and in its Catholic form, must be given up.

But the giving up of the theory of a thing, is not in itself the giving up of that thing. And to say that Biblical criticism has undermined or destroyed a certain theory of religion, is not to say that it has destroyed religion. The Copernican theory of astronomy destroyed the Ptolemaic theory, but it did not destroy the sun, the planets, and the stars. It only made possible a truer and more rational knowledge of the heavenly bodies. So Biblical criticism, while it destroyed a theory of religion, did not destroy religion itself. What is religion? Some have said, it is doctrine or dogma extracted from an infallible Bible, either by an infallible church, or by a body of learned theologians. In that case, of course, it would be vitally affected by the results of Biblical criticism. Others have said, with Cicero, starting from the etymology of the Latin word, that it is ritualism, the constant repetition of the things which pertain to the worship of the gods, such as the decoration of images, offering of sacrifices, chanting of hymns and prayers. So far as the etymology of the word is concerned we believe that Cicero is right; for the idea of an outward ritualism was doubtless the Roman conception of religion at the time when the word was formed. But that is not

the deepest conception of religion; and if it were, then again religion would rise or fall with the critical study of the book of rules by which the ritual is supposed to be governed. We believe that a better conception of religion is that which defines it as the sense of communion with God, or as the experience of the life of God in the soul. In its most perfect or Christian form, then, religion is the experience of the life of God in the soul, as

determined and brought to its highest expression through the revelation of God in Christ. And that is something that criticism has not destroyed, and never can destroy. It is above all critical conflicts. How could the criticism of a book destroy that which is most fundamental in the life of the human soul?

But while the Bible is not the foundation of the religious life of the soul, and while this life could, therefore, not be destroyed by any criticism of the Bible, it is nevertheless true that the Bible has a very high value for the Christian religious life. Has that value been at all affected by the results of Biblical criticism? We believe that it has, but only favorably. Criticism has not destroyed the religious historical value of the Bible. For the history of the evolution of religion in humanity collectively and in the human soul individually the Bible has as much au thority and value in the critical view as it ever had in the dogmatic view. To be sure it has ceased to be an infallible textbook on universal history and on science. Its authority is now limited to religion. And this limitation is due to the higher criticism, which has disclosed its imperfections along other lines. But in spite of this limitation, we still go to it for an exact knowledge of the nature and history of religion; which is something different, however, from philosophical or speculative the ology. The Bible, even in the light of the highest modern criticism, is a record of the progressive knowledge of God and of the life which is the effect of such knowledge, among the most religious people in the world. There are other sacred books besides the Bible; but in none of them does the tide of religious knowl. edge and life reach so high a point as in the Christian Scriptures. This is the confession of those who have studied these Scriptures most critically and thoroughly. It is, however, to the knowledge of God and its effects in the human soul that the Bible is principally devoted. If we would study art, or science, or history, we would resort to other literature than that of the Bible. It is not all sorts of knowledge, but the knowledge of God that the Bible promotes. And such knowledge doubtless presupposes a special self-revelation of God. God from of old has revealed