channels when uninvited it presents itself, but it will go in search of it in every direction. Marcus Dods, in a recent sermon, said the sea-anemone was the emblem of the healthy Christian; it is the emblem likewise of healthy Christian theology. "Firmly fixed on the rock, it has many feelers floating around, to seize everything than can be used." All available knowledge must be seized and reconciled with faith, and this will be accomplished only when all the established facts furnished by nature, science and revelation shall have been reduced to a living unity in the ideal theological system that is to be.

Constructive and hospitable, the spirit of the Christian thought for which we are looking will also be devout. It is difficult to to see how it could be otherwise. Time was when unbelief spoke in harsh and blatant tones of things sacred and divine. That time has gone. Now even unbelief is subdued in discussing things of God. It has learned a profound lesson from those who are solemn and devout in their quest of the truth. Surely the theological investigations of the future will be pursued in the same spirit. Realizing that it stands on holy ground, where sincerity, devotion and prayerfulness alone are appropriate, it will always seek the aid and guidance of the Holy Ghost in its work.

2. As to method the Christian theology under consideration, will be scientifically critical, historical rather than metaphysical, and biblical rather than speculative. At the beginning of a new century there is evidence on all sides that thoughtful men are unutterably weary of, and impatient with, unproved theories. As never before they are determined to be satisfied with nothing less than established fact. Under the application of the scientifically critical method many departments of human knowledge have been enlarged, and the mental horizon of men greatly widened. Why should it be otherwise as the result of the same method with theological science? The Christian thought of the future will apply the same rigorous principles in the employment of its materials. Accordingly it will be obliged to begin differently from what the traditional systems did, and proceed more cautiously, but must not the results thus to be obtained warrant

a new start and greater caution? It will recognize the wisdom of Browning's saying that,

"Who climbs keeps one foot firm on fact

Ere hazarding the next step,"

and true to it, the theology that is to come will so far as it is possible advance only from the known to the unknown.

Hence the stress that will be placed by it upon the historical and biblical as over against the metaphysical and the speculative. The latter, metaphysical and speculative, will have their place also, and one more prominent no doubt than most of the Ritschlian school of thinkers would just now be likely to grant; but none the less, the preponderating emphasis will be justly placed upon the former, the historical and biblical. The great and undisputed historical facts of the New Testament, the unquestionable results achieved by biblical critics in the way of establishing the value and significance of certain books, as well as in the rational exegesis of particular texts from those books, will be taken account of in the erection of the temple of that science which for sublimity of content, is the superior of all.

3. As to the principle which will be dominant in the theology of the future the general trend of the best religious thinking of to-day can leave no one in doubt. Fifty years ago the Christological principle had no such practically unanimous support among those whose support is most desirable. It is true there is some variety of conception as to the nature of this principle to which Christ gives the name, some making it His person, some His consciousness, and some what is called the Christ idea. All however, are at one in affirming that Christ Himself is the distinctive element in the thought and life of Christianity. In His own word He is the "way"-the way apart from which "no man cometh unto the Father." In the word of one of His greatest interpreters-"of God, Christ is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption "wisdom, that is, the divinely granted, humanly needed revelation which through His incarnate life, the Son of God has bestowed on us; righteousness, that is, reconciliation on our part toward

God, acceptance on God's part of us; sanctification, that is, the presence and power of the Holy Spirit; this three-fold gift of Christ thus culminating in the bliss of man's glorious redemption. As Christ according to His own word and that of Paul is the beginning and end of everything pertaining to Christian life and salvation, so for Christian thought He will more and more be recognized as its one unifying principle, its ever-living allpervasive historical center. By making Him the "Mittlebegriff" as Nitzsche in his "System der Christlichen Lehre" puts it "our thoughts of man and God meet and are harmonized."

There is a certain school of philosophic thinkers who argue that nothing in Jesus Christ has any importance except His moral teaching. Emerson says Christendom has always dwelt "with noxious exaggeration,"on the Person of Christ; but our coming theology appreciating more thoroughly than most of us as yet do, will dwell with still greater insistence upon the significance of His Person. In his last book Romanes says, "science is moving with all the force of a tidal wave toward faith in Jesus Christ as the world's Saviour." A power stronger than that of a "tidal wave" will bind theological thought in the future to the historical Christ "who will form its starting point, whose divinehuman person will have guiding light and regulative force for the formation of all its doctrines, and who will form for it also the end and goal of revelation." And in ascribing such significance to the Incarnate Son of God future theology will not rest in, but rise from, the conception of his manhood and His office as the great ethical Teacher to that of His Saviourhood and Godhead. It will not, with Schmiedel and Cheyne and their colaborers in the recently published volumes of the "Encyclopedia Biblica," declare that faith in the Incarnation and Resurrection must be given up, but by placing these facts in the very forefront of its system the tendency now observable in certain quarters of allowing Christ's Deity to remain obscured if not doubted or dis believed, will be happily superseded.

4. As to aim the Christian theology of the future will be preeminently practical. And strange as it may at first the

appear,

profoundest truths are often the most influential on human conduct and character. The doctrine of the Incarnation for instance, is surely the crowning mystery which no man can ever hope to fathom, yet what source of moral power or spiritual uplift is comparable to an intelligent apprehension of this great truth! When the Christian comes under its spell, when he is possessed by the thought that God Himself came down to this earth and lived as we are living, he takes a leap forward like the advance from infancy to manhood. To impel men to make such leaps is the practical purpose that will be sought after by the ideal theology in days to come. The system of thought centering in Him whose name is love, essays to make men loving and forgiving, to lead them to treat each other as brethren, to break up class distinctions, to hinder the outrageous disparities between wealth and poverty, and to destroy forever that luxurious selfishness living side by side with unpitied and unhelped distress, and which is such a reproach to present-day civilization. Spurning doctrinal dilettanteism this theology will aim to have the Christian creed to justify itself in Christian deed, in better lives, in ennobled communities, in righteous civil policy, in truer, juster political, economic, intellectual, social and religious conditions. Those that have confidence in the future of Christianity, should confidently await this Christian theology of the future.

VIII.

EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.

THE BIBLE AND THE CHILD.

Bearing this title there is lying before us a small volume of essays, published several years ago by the Macmillan Company, New York. These essays were written by different authors, among whom are such well-known Christian scholars and thinkers as Dean Farrar, Professor Adeney, Dean Fremantle, Dr. Washington Gladden and Dr. Lyman Abbott. The general problem discussed in these essays is "the right way of presenting the Bible to the young in the light of the Higher Criticism." How can the results obtained by the modern critical and historical study of the Bible be best utilized in the instruction of the young in the family, the Bible class, and the Sunday-school? That certainly is a question which must present itself to thoughtful Christian teachers everywhere. In the present condition of religious thought it will not do to ignore the problem and treat it as if it did not exist.

That, indeed, has usually been the course recommended by the opponents of the Higher Criticism, who are convinced that the maintenance of the old views of the Bible is essential to the continuance of religion. The Higher Criticism has rejected some of the theories concerning the Bible which have been current for ages. It has come to the conclusion that the traditional theories as to the authorship, inspiration and infallibility of the Biblical books are not wholly tenable in the light of modern Christian scholarship. It is very sure, for instance, that Moses did not write the Pentateuch. In fact it holds that the first five, or rather six, books of the Bible are a very composite work, whose several parts date from different ages, some having originated as late as one thousand years after the time of Moses. Hence, while these books may have a high religious and moral value,