1. Dr. Garvie's theory of inspiration is distinctly that known as the Gracious theory. "We must conceive the apostolic inspiration as the common Christian inspiration raised to a higher power in the measure of the clearer vision of closer communion with, and fuller consecration to Christ as Savior and Lord" (p. 65). That is, the difference between the Apostles and ourselves with regard to inspiration is one of degree merely and not of kind. "Paul's writings have a significance and value for us such as no writings outside of the New Testament have, because he was so fully and thoroughly Christ's" (p. 66). This was not, however, the view which he took of himself. He claimed divine authority for his teaching, not because of his piety, but because he spoke "not in words which man's wisdom taught but which the Spirit taught" (1 Cor. ii. 13). His claim, too, and that of the other Apostles, was confirmed by God himself “in signs and wonders, and divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost." And then this view breaks down on Dr. Garvie's own principles-it is unworkable. The Apostles declared those anathema who did not receive their doctrines: we, however, would think ourselves anathema, were we to make any such claim for ourselves. But where are we to draw the line? Our inspiration is the same in kind with the Apostles'. To what degree, then, must it attain to render him anathema who does not appreciate it?

2. Equally unsatisfactory and even more inconsistent is our author's position as to miracles. He argues acutely and conclusively against Harnack and J. M. Thompson when they would explain away the miracles of our Lord, and he makes Mill and Hume in their opposition to miracles destroy one another: but he himself rejects every one of the Old Testament miracles; and while he frankly admits the impossibility of desupernaturalizing all of the New Testament ones, he regards them as "constituents" of Christ's mission rather than as "credentials" of it, more as the reflected glory of his redemptive work than as the signs and seals of supernatural revelation, rather as suggesting problems than as attesting the glory of the Son of God. That is, he accepts Christ as his Lord and Master and then declines as credentials the credentials to which he appeals (Luke vii. 22). 3. Equally defective is our author's theory of the will. With such writers as Julius Müller, James Seth, and Samuel Harris, he holds to the "self-determination of the will." While making much of the necessity and the power of motives, he maintains that the secret of the moral life is not in the character in which the self appears to express itself, but in an unexpressed residuum of the self. Hence, "personal development is creative evolution." As Müller says, "we form our own character out of self." There is no objection to the theory of the indifference of the will which does not apply almost equally to this. In essence, indeed, it involves the Kantian distinction between the transcendental ego and the empirical ego.

4. The doctrine of the fall is rejected as mythical and as unessential.

"It is impossible to maintain as literal history," we are told, “the narratives in Genesis 1-111. We now know that these stories are borrowed from Babylonian mythology, although stripped of polytheism, and clothed with monotheism in the telling. Even if we could take them literally, does the cause-the eating of an apple-seem adequate to the effect-the sinfulness of the human race" (p. 175)? As though it were the mere eating of the apple, and not the disobedience, to say no more, involved in the eating of that apple, that was the cause. Paul, it is true, believed this and other stories, but he could well have been mistaken. Nor is our author phased by the fact that if the fall is denied, the universality of sin is left unexplained. He is content to leave it unexplained, and we must give him credit for criticising acutely and rejecting the evolutionary and other theories of the origin of sin that have been proposed in explanation of its universality.

5. Our author's point of view, as might be expected from his Ritschlian sympathies, not to say tendencies, is christocentric rather than theocentric. With him Christ is the great fact. He seems to forget our Lord's own words, "Ye believe in God, believe also in me" (John xiv. 1). This causes him to present his argument in what seems to us an illogical order Thus he discusses the "Lord Jesus Christ" and the "Christian Salvation" before he vindicates the "Christian View of God;" and we cannot but think that his argument suffers from his doing so, and more especially as, unlike Ritschl, he appreciates the need of a metaphysic of Christ's person and finds it in that which the Fourth Gospel offers. To receive Christ as the Son of God, must we not start with God the Father?

6. It is, however, in his eschatology that Dr. Garvie departs most from the "faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints." Thus, for belief in the personal and physical second advent of our Lord he substitutes "the experience of Christ's presence here and now, the expectation of clearer vision, closer communion, and greater iesemblance in heaven, and the conviction that the Sovereignty of Christ's Saviorhood will yet be fully owned on earth." The conception of the General Judgment he so transforms as virtually to reject it, and he affirms distinctly a second probation for all who have not deliberately rejected Christ. The doctrine of the eternal punishment of the impenitent is set aside and for it is substituted the fancy that the finally impenitent, if such there be, will, not by any act of divine omnipotence annihilating them, but by the inevitable decay of their personality, drop out of existence.

But enough. It must be evident that the Christianity which this "Handbook" would vindicate is the Christianity of this age; it is not the Christianity of the ages. And yet the reviewer would be most unwilling to make the impression that he has found nothing good. He has found much that is excellent. The chapter on the "Christian Salvation" is in the main true and illuminating. The objective reference of Christ's death and the vicariousness of his sacrifice are

strongly insisted on. At times one almost fancies that he is reading the blood theology of the Fathers. So, too, the chapter on the "Christian Ideal" is a just, a noble, and a timely presentation. We do not know of a more pertinent and satisfactory vindication of Christian ethics. Perhaps, we would better say, We do not know of one that is so good. Finally, Dr. Garvie's argument for the realization both of the universal and of the individual Christian hope is conclusive; it is triumphant; it is the tonic that we all need in an age of doubt; we thank him heartily for it, and all who are "not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ" must do the same. Princeton.

WILLIAM BRENTON GREENE, Jr.

Constructive Natural Theology. By NEWMAN SMYTH. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1913. 8vo; pp. viii, 123.

This small but attractive volume contains four lectures delivered upon the Taylor Foundation of the Yale School of Religion. They are entitled "Scientific Materials for Theology," "The Method and Problems," "Christ as Final Fact of Nature" and "Scientific Spirituality." They are written in the striking and often brilliant style, with the wealth of literary allusion, with the breadth of knowledge, and also with the evident distaste for dogmatic theology, characteristic of their distinguished author. They have for their aim to show the importance and to lay down the method of "a theology of nature constructed in accordance with the known mechanical principles of evolution" to take the place of "the older natural theology which, strongly built as it was from the scientific materials of its times, has been abandoned as an antiquated and no longer tenable fortification." To speak more correctly, these lectures would point out that "two features characterize generally, with some honorable exceptions, the teaching of natural theology in our Protestant theological seminaries: namely, the method is negative, an attempted destruction of scientific objections; and also the books referred to are not distinguished by familiarity with scientific researches up to date": and they would hold up as an example for all the "New College, Edinburgh, where instruction abreast of the times is furnished in science, and where examination in Professor Simpson's course of general biology is required for a degree in divinity."

With the general aim of this discussion the reviewer finds himself in hearty accord. While he is not ready to admit that the principle of "the older natural theology" has been set aside, and still less that the principle of evolution should take its place, he sees clearly the importance of a new natural theology which shall utilize the new wealth of scientific material to prove the existence and to illustrate the ways of God. It does not seem to him, however, that this calls for the introduction of courses in science, even in biological science, into the curricula of our theological seminaries. Such in

struction is provided in our colleges; and our seminaries, almost without exception, require their students to be college graduates. Then, too, the theological curriculum has become too crowded to allow any addition to it. Still further, as compared with natural theology, revealed theology must hold the place of first importance. It is God's last and special message to men: natural theology illustrates it, but it interprets natural theology. Finally, no matter how developed, not even when based on the most up-to-date science, has natural theology anything to say of what the sinner needs most to know; namely, redemption.

This is true of natural science in general and from the nature of the case, but it would seem to be specially true of natural science as our author understands it. Indeed, we do not see how, reading it as he does, he can discern in it the possibilities that he finds. Our interest in natural theology is strong because we agree with Paul that "the invisible things of God since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity" (Rom. i.20). We confess that our interest would be greatly lessened were we, with our author, obliged to reduce the meaning of nature as follows: "The presence of some 'unknown factor' in nature is everywhere to be felt; that factor seems to indicate some energy of mind in forming matter, an energizing that is superhuman, but not necessarily supernatural. By whatever means wrought out, nature seems to have been first thought out" (p. 67). If this be all that the latest science can tell us of God, the only ground on which it could claim admission to the theological curriculum would be that the latter were empty.

Indeed, we would question its right to admission even then; for its testimony is most uncertain precisely as to what is most essential in theology as well as in religion. It is of "the superhuman, but not necessarily supernatural" that it speaks. Now the supernatural is the characteristic idea, the fundamental fact, of both theology and religion. It is, however, from Dr. Smyth's christology that we would dissent most earnestly. He regards Christ as "the final fact of nature"; but if this be the teaching of natural theology, then the latter must be the contradiction of revealed theology. How can he belong to the world when, as John tells us, "all things were made by him" (St. John 1.3)? How could the evolution even of the whole creation develop him who declared himself to be one with the Father (John x. 30)? At least, how could this be, unless, as in pantheism, God and the universe are identified? How can natural heredity, even if accompanied by an "influx of spiritual power which is beyond our apprehension, but not beyond the capacity of nature to receive," (p. 84) account for him that "descended out of heaven, even the Son of man, which is in heaven" (St. John iii. 13)? Nor in holding thus would we for a moment admit that our Lord did not enter into "the full inheritance of our human nature" (p. 84), and so can not be a "high

priest touched with the feeling of all our infirmities." What we would most emphatically deny is, not that he did not at and through his incarnation take our humanity, but that he who was in the beginning with God and who himself from all eternity existed as God (John i. 1-18) could ever have been developed out of that humanity which he himself in time created.

It may be remarked in closing that our author's view of "the virgin birth" is in complete accord with his general attitude. He regards the narrative of the virgin birth as "very likely one of the earlier after-thoughts of some of the disciples concerning their risen Lord" (p. 82), and he thinks that it furnishes an "exceptionable difficulty" precisely because it emphasizes our Savior's supernaturalness. Could there be a clearer proof that we have not misstated Dr. Smyth's position? Princeton.

WILLIAM BRENTON GREENE, Jr.

Legal and Historical Proof of the Resurrection of the Dead with an Examination of the Evidence in the New Testament. By JOHN F. WHITWORTH, Author of "Taxation of Corporations," "Statutory Law of Corporations," "Creation of Corporations," "Corporate Opinions," etc. Harrisburg, Pa.: Publishing House of the United Evangelical Church. 1912. 8vo; pp. 70.

The title of this book exactly describes its contents. It argues for the trustworthiness of the New Testament, and so for the truth of the testimony to the resurrection of the dead, on the same ground on which Greenleaf takes in his standard work on Evidence; on the basis of the historical witnesses, even from the first and among her foes, to the facts of Christianity, and from the circumstances and especially from the character of the writers.

If men of the world would always judge in religion as they do in the ordinary affairs of life, there is no doubt that their verdict would accord with our author's presentation of the case; and, therefore, we earnestly hope that it will be so widely circulated as to call for other editions. Should this be so, however, the whole work should be carefully revised. There are several slips. Among them we may mention the following: Justin Martyrs on p. 37; the statement regarding Matthew on p. 39, that "he wrote about the year 38"; the assertion on p. 46 that "the world is indebted to Luke alone for the preservation of the Lord's Prayer"; the statement on p. 67, that "Dr. Lyman Abbott declares that no 'event in the world's history is better attested than is the resurrection of Jesus'" (what we question is not the truth of the declaration, but its source); and the use, p. 19, of the phrase "the resurrection of the dead" as "synonymous" with the expression "the immortality of the soul." WILLIAM BRENTON GREENE, JR.

Princeton.