Headlam, for instance, warned him already of the untenableness of his division of miracles into two classes-he called them then "the supernatural" and "the abnormal”— in point of both nature and attestation. Dr. Strong rebuked beforehand his belittling of the issue and pointed out clearly that the real issue raised is just that between Christianity and "some form of mechanical naturalism". He said:109

"The question of miracles is not a question of detail, or one that can be neglected in the interest of practical or spiritual religion. It is one form of the question whether God made and governs the world, and to decide this negatively is to adopt some form of mechanical naturalism."

And Canon Carnegie pronounced already the final judgment upon the whole matter:110

"A non-miraculous Christianity might have a future before it; on that I express no opinion; but it would have no past behind it to which it could look for guidance and encouragement. I cannot regard it as a legitimate development of the old Christianity. It is a new religion constituted on a completely different basis, and involving principles and motives of a completely different character."

There are in point of fact unnaturally bound together in the Church of England to-day three different and necessarily antagonistic systems of religion. The Bishop of Oxford takes some account of them in his survey of the state of the Church,111 but does not seem adequately to feel their essential opposition to one another. According to him the Church of England is brought into peril to-day by three tendencies which are driving to intolerable excesses points of view in themselves mutually tolerable: Catholic, Evangelical and Modernist need only avoid pushing things to such extremes and all will be well. It is a great mistake, however, to imagine that it is only in extreme applications of the warring principles that the strange combination of such contradictory elements in a single body becomes an intolerable evil. Sacerdotalism, Evangelicalism, Naturalism 109 P. 181.

110 P. 194.

111 The Basis, etc., p. 30.

are not complementary elements in one whole of truth but stand related as precise contradictions in their fundamental principles. No doubt there is a larger body of truth held in common between Sacerdotalism and Evangelicalism than between either and Naturalism, and these may therefore seem in their common opposition to Naturalism to draw together. Supernaturalism for instance, which is the very breath of life of any operative religion for sinners-is common ground between them. But this agreement in certain fundamental truths does not void their contradiction at vital points, although it may explain how Dr. Headlam, for example, can argue that it is an exaggeration to speak of them as two different religious systems.112 In his survey Dr. Headlam strangely omits all consideration of the Naturalism which is rampant in the Church of England-and not in the Church of England alone among the churches -and which undoubtedly is a religion in its very essence distinct from anything that can by any legitimate extension of language be called Christianity.

What is happening in the Church of England at the moment is an attempt on the part of Sacerdotalism to suppress Evangelicalism and to extrude Naturalism. In this Sacerdotalism is only showing that it is coming to ever purer consciousness of its own essential nature. That it should assert itself and endeavor to free itself from the constant irritation of contact within the same organization of contradictory systems of religion is only natural and is to be commended. It is a pity that it should have been left to it to demand the exclusion of Naturalism from a church claiming the Christian name. It is to be hoped that Evangelicalism will after a while awake to its responsibilities and to its strength, and take over the task of freeing the Church of England from such destructive error. It does not seem as if that day had yet come: Sacerdotalism appears rather to be in a position to threaten it along with Naturalism. This undoubtedly brings with it

11 The Church Quarterly Review, April 1914, p. 156.

a great peril: for no error could be more fatal than for Evangelicalism, under the sting of the common assault made upon them both by Sacerdotalism, to make common cause with Naturalism. What is needed above everything else in the Church of England is that Evangelicals—who after all constitute the only legitimate Church of England— should recover their self-consciousness and assert themselves; no longer seeking as "good churchmen" to conciliate the Sacerdotalists or as "men of open mind" to conciliate the Liberals, but as faithful stewards of the saving gospel to please the Master. There is an application here too of the saying: "Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers."

Princeton.

BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD.

THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS*

Recent discussion of the beginnings of Christianity have set in clearer light the intimate relation of the death of Jesus in its redemptive significance and the resurrection of Jesus. This ought never to have been obscured since it is so plainly taught in the New Testament. But the uniqueness of the resurrection and the fundamental importance attached to it by Paul for the validity of the Gospel and of Christian faith and hope, and the manifestly causal relation which it sustained in the quickening and informing of the belief of the primitive Christian community, have given it a certain isolation as an object both of attack and defense in the course of the Christian centuries. The bond of union is primarily conceptual, but ultimately, if both are true, personal, since both are predicated of Jesus. It is this fact-their relation to Jesus-that gives them their significance. Entering thus into primitive Christian faith these two facts-the death and the resurrection of Jesus-have meaning for the early Apostolic conception not only of Jesus but also of His work.

But supposing these two elements to have formed part of the primitive Apostolic conception of Jesus—and the evidence for this can not be questioned-the origin of this conception and its validity are matters of the utmost concern since the issue involves the truthfulness of Christianity in its very inception. There is no reason to doubt and there is good evidence for believing that by this conception of Jesus, including these two facts, Christianity was constituted a religion of redemption; for Jesus was for Christian faith the Saviour in and through His death and resurrection.

Whence then came this faith? Was it grounded in experience and does it lay hold upon reality? If so, its origin and adequate cause can be no other than Jesus Himself. But if not, the origin either of the whole or of part of the

*Two lectures delivered at the Princeton Seminary Summer School of Theology in June, 1914.

conception must be sought in some idea which has transformed Jesus into the person possessed of the qualities and charged with the function ascribed to Him in primitive Christian faith.

The decision of this issue is certain if the primary historical evidence-the testimony of the New Testament writings is trustworthy. This however is frequently questioned. It is necessary therefore to analyse the evidence and consider its implications. When these have been determined, the hypothesis of transformation must be tested. If this fails to account for the origin of Christian faith, the explanation which this faith gives of its own origin ought to be accepted and with it the character of the Christian religion which this involves.

There is of course a reason for the separation of the resurrection from the death of Jesus. The resurrection plainly implicates the supernatural and can have no place in a naturalistic interpretation of the origin of Christianity. The death of Jesus may however be accepted as a fact and fitted into such a construction. But this necessitates a modification of the New Testament representation both of Jesus' person and of the significance of His death, eliminating the divine element of His person and the redemptive meaning of His death, transferring both to the sphere of idea or belief not grounded in reality but otherwise historically occasioned, and retaining as facts only a human person and his actual death.

It is not strange therefore that even from the naturalistic point of view an interpretation of the origin of Christianity should appear which insists upon the union of the death and the resurrection in a view of Jesus in which together these two elements have significance and of which they form an essential part. Only, on this interpretation, the New Testament conception of Jesus, not in part and not in particular by the inclusion of the resurrection but in its entirety, becomes either the transformation by apotheosis of an historical individual-a man, Jesus the prophet of Nazareth