he has devoted himself to critical Old Testament study for over a quarter of a century; that his aim in this volume is not so much to establish traditional views as to show that the critics are wrong; that his book shows the flimsiness of the critical superstructure; and that his hale and hearty skepticism toward the disintegrating results of criticism should recall the critics to sanity of mind and sobriety of judgment. Dr. Whitelaw's criticism of the critics represents that conservative wing in the United Free Church of Scotland which is dissatisfied with the teachings of George Adam Smith and others like him.

IN the Hibbert Journal (London) for October, 1903, the eye is caught by a fine statement from Arnold Pinchard, of Birmingham, as to what the Church teaches concerning human attainment and destiny. It occurs in a criticism and correction of a misrepresentation of that teaching found in a previous article by Mr. Lowes Dickinson on "Optimism and Immortality." Mr. Pinchard's statement is as follows: "The Church upholds before the eyes and hearts of men the highest and most inspiring Ideal of Goodness, wrought out in obedience to the requirements of the Eternal and Immutable Law of Righteousness; diminishes naught from its demands, and proclaims without flinching the penalties of willful moral failure; makes glorious the horizon toward which men may journey with the splendor of an assured hope; sets before men a definite goal of possible ultimate perfection in the achievement of a great destiny; and promises and secures to all alike in their temporal progress such stimulus and help by the cooperation of Almighty God as each may need. At the same time the Church is too true to the facts of life to ignore the possibility of individual failure; too sane not to realize that the loss in such a case must be great and terrible in proportion to the grandeur and glory of the possible success. Yet she will use these dire possibilities of eternal loss to brace and stimulate her children to more strenuous effort rather than to reprobate their seeming failures or to crush their hopes. That no man is altogether and absolutely good or bad; that no man can entirely attain perfection in this life; that final judgment cannot be passed upon any man in the dim twilight of the ignorances of today; that beyond this life there are 'many mansions'-mansions of purification and perfectingmansions of joy and peace-mansions of progressive Revelation and enlightenment-culminating in the contemplation of the Beatific Vision of the Absolute Good in God Himself, whereunto all men, whatever their inherent weaknesses or hindrances of circumstance, may ultimately attainthese truths she holds for sure, and in her grasp upon them maintains the unfaltering optimism of her steadfast outlook upon life! Yet the Church recognizes as a possibility that there may be found, in that strange and complex mystery which is man, a power of obstinate resistance to Good and of invincible aversion to truth, which may ultimately render the individual inaccessible to every moral influence which, without prejudice or violence to the integrity of his freedom as a morally responsible agent, can be brought to bear upon him; and she sadly acknowledges both the

justice and necessity of the exaction of the penalties and sanctions of that Law which alike gives and demands nothing less than perfection, wherever it has been persistently rejected in the beneficence of its promise, and as obstinately defied in the prerogative of its power. She may hope, she must pray and strive, that there may be but few such losses; she is too sane and too honest, too brave and too true, to deny or ignore the possibility that there may be some. And why should we resent and cavil at this final self-assertion of the Law of Life and Goodness any more than at the operation of the same law in the material universe? We believe that all things move onward toward an Ideal Perfection. But is this Ideal never to be realized? Or can it ever be realized until all that hinders is taken away, and all that mars or tends to mar a single feature of its perfect beauty is eliminated? We believe in this steady upward progress, and we understand somewhat of the Law under which all things thus move together toward a perfect end, which shall be indeed not an end, but the initiation of a new era of unhindered development." Concerning the Universalist notion that all souls must ultimately reach heaven, Mr. Pinchard says: "It is a doctrine calculated to lull conscience to sleep, paralyze all effort, and put a premium on a life spent in playing the concertina beneath umbrageous trees in a languid acquiescence in the assumed ultimate benevolence of all things." Three clergymen who had left Universalist for orthodox pulpits said that what especially drove them from Universalism was the effect of its teachings on the lives and characters of its adherents. It is a powerless and futile faith. Instead of Universalistic teachings, Pinchard presents the following more rational and more moral postulates, as representing the orthodox view:

(1) That the world is not eternally or entirely good, but embodies a real (not merely an apparent) process in time toward an eternally good end. (2) That this end is one in which all individuals may participate if they will; and (3) That individual souls must be at least potentially immortal, and may all of them, if they will, ultimately reach heaven. Here we have three postulates upon which we may base our optimistic outlook upon life. For they are built upon a due consideration of all the facts; they take account of the principle of indefectible morality in the progress of mankind toward a perfect and eternal end; they allow for the claims of Justice, and acknowledge implicitly the Majesty of Eternal and Immutable Law; they provide for the ultimate satisfaction of man's highest aspirations-for the insatiate hunger for eternity -for the passionate though inarticulate demand of humanity for the touch of some perfect thing; they point to a destiny more august than can conceivably be compassed within the short span and narrow limitations of this life; they look to where beyond this darkness there is clearer light, surer knowledge, and an incomparably wider range of opportunity; they take account of man's moral responsibility, and make their appeal to his sense of the greatness of his destiny, to his own personal dignity, honor, and courage; they refuse to ignore or allow him to ignore the possibilities of failure which belong to and are involved in the splendid adventure to which he stands committed; they include within the scope of their optimism every man whose life is honest and characterized by steady loyalty to the truth that he sees and is convinced of in his heart; and if they contemplate the awful alternative of failure, yet they exclude none save the ultimately self-excluded; and they only contemplate it because one dares not so tamper with the elementary principles of morality as to obscure the infinite distinction between Good and Evil, or to ignore the deep and immutable relation in which are bound up with these both Life and Death.

-In the same issue of the Hibbard Journal is an excellent review by E. P. Boys-Smith of The Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott, Bishop of Durham. Of Westcott in his Cambridge professorship, this is written: "A mere attendance at the lectures which he gave to candidates for Holy Orders was enough to make one feel the sunny purity of the ethereal soul. What an expressive face his was! Met in the street when hurrying along, the mind withdrawn within, it would look gray, and set, and dried, the broad brow hidden partly by the cap, and the small stature and nervous manner attracting little notice. But during the lecture, in which a verse and a half of St. John's writings would be discussed, unfolded, and illustrated by many another passage, till it became plainly impossible within the hour to reach further than these few words, or to touch upon five sixths of the section which had been intended, there would break from time to time a light over the face and in the deep expressive eyes, which one knew was a reflection of the light of Heaven that was shining upon the lecturer's own soul." Sir W. B. Richmond, the artist to whom Westcott sat for his portrait, says:

It was delightful to watch the ever-moving face, like the seasons, for its variety-how those clear gray eyes flashed, and the brows became almost knotted with the intensity of a thought growing behind them; and then, when the thought was brought to birth, the wrinkles were smoothed out, and, like the cloudless sky of a summer day, his splendid domed forehead exposed a serenity and calm almost godlike. There was no part of his face which did not illustrate emotion: worn with thought, puckered with conflicting struggles, the whole countenance told the history of a temperament wearing itself away with conflict. The spiritual expression was prevented from being sentimental by the virility in the man's nature. One could see under that sweet face the possible presence of a great storm, and under that restrained nature a fire and a passion burning the very life. And it was this sort of perfection of human attributes which gave the charm as well as the force to his character. One felt in the presence of a man that knew the fire, but whose spiritual nature knew how to use it for good.

Westcott's greatest monument of course is the revision of the Greek Text of the New Testament, at which, in company with his friend, Professor Hort, he toiled for twenty-eight years. Preaching at Cambridge, near the end of life he used these impressive words:

"In this chapel, and in these courts, fifty-six years ago, I saw visions, as it is promised that young men shall see them in the last days-visions which in their outward circumstances have been immeasurably more than fulfilled. I have had an unusually long working time, and I think unequaled opportunities of service. When I have failed, as I have failed often and grievously, it has not been because I once saw an ideal, but because I have not looked to it constantly, steadily, faithfully; because I have distrusted myself and distrusted others; because again and again I have lost the help of sympathy, since I was unwilling to claim from those 'who called me friend' the sacrifice which I was myself ready to make. So now an old man I dream dreams of great hope, when I plead with those who will carry forward what my own generation has left unattempted or unaccomplished, to welcome the ideal which breaks in light upon them, the only possible ideal for man, even the fullest realization of self in the completest service of one's fellow-men, in obedience to the Master's command; and to pursue that ideal with quenchless ardor, undiscouraged even if it seems to 'fade forever and forever as we move.""

BOOK NOTICES.

RELIGION, THEOLOGY, AND BIBLICAL LITERATURE.

Things Fundamental. By CHARLES E. JEFFERSON, D.D. 12mo, pp. 380. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Price, cloth, $1.50.

These thirteen discourses in modern apologetics from one of the most influential pulpits of Greater Methodism contain a great deal of good old-fashioned Methodist doctrine, unflinchingly set with sharp edges in the face of current confusion, laxity, and skepticism. Their reasoning is large and strong, firm and faithful, clear and convincing. Their arguments close in on the reason and the conscience irresistibly. Fundamental things are so set forth as to seem inevitable; one might say they are set in battle array to compel surrender. "The Nature and Place of Faith in the Christian Life," "The Nature and Place of Reason in the Christian Life," "The Deity of Jesus," "The Miracles," "Sin and Its Forgiveness," "Sin and Its Punishment," "The Church of the Living God," "The Immortality of the Soul," "The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit," are some of the fundamental things which Dr. Jefferson sets with ancient and mighty force in an array which is strategic in its adaptation to the attitude of the modern mind. That these discourses are both timely and telling cannot be denied. The man who framed them knows his doctrine and knows his time and fits one to the other with tongue-andgroove closeness. It is no exaggeration to call this volume an arsenal of weapons suited to the fields and conflicts of to-day. Dip haphazard into the book and find this: "Our reason is not the whole of us. We have an emotional nature, a nature which has its tastes and affections, its aspirations and hungerings. This part of us is as important as the so-called intellectual. It was at this point that John Fiske parted company with Thomas Huxley. Both were great men, but Fiske had the richer nature. There was more of Fiske than there was of Huxley. The Life of Huxley by his son shows that his mental limitations were serious. His prejudices were numerous and solid. His mind moved within narrow limits. Huxley asserted that there is but one kind of knowledge; which is not so. And he maintained that there is only one kind of evidence; and this also is erroneous. Fiske would not follow him in this. Fiske was inclined to ask him in the words of Tennyson:

Who forged that other influence,

That heat of inward evidence,

That makes one doubt against the sense?"

In arguing for the Deity of Christ from His place and power in history, this is part of what Dr. Jefferson says: "Christianity is not wholly dependent on a book. It is true that Jesus cuts a large figure in the New Testament; but if that were the only place on earth where His figure was

colossal, we should make short work of Him-we should relegate Him to a place among the heroes of fiction. But He cuts a still larger figure in human history. He walks down the centuries with the tread of a conqueror. Nineteen hundred years have passed since He died upon the Cross, and in all these centuries He has been lifting empires off their hinges, and turning the streams of history into new channels. Emerson is right when he says that His name is plowed into the world. Renan is right when he says that His life has been made a corner stone in the building of our race. Lecky is right when he says that the simple record of three short years of Christ's active life has done more to soften and regenerate mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists. Christ in history! There is a factface it! Jesus walked along the shores of a little lake known as the Sea of Galilee. And there He called Peter and Andrew and James and John and others to be His followers, and they left all and followed Him. While they followed Him they revered Him, and later on adored and worshiped Him. At last He left them on their faces, each man saying, 'My Lord and my God!' All that is in the New Testament. But put the New Testament away for a while. Time passes; history widens; an unseen Presence walks up and down the shores of a larger sea, called the Mediterranean,—and this unseen Presence calls men to follow Him. Tertullian, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Francis of Assisi, Thomas à Kempis, Savonarola, John Huss, Martin Luther, Philip Melancthon, Ulric Zwingle, John Calvin-another Twelve-and these all followed Him and cast themselves at His feet, saying, in the words of the earlier Twelve, ‘My Lord and my God!' Time passes; history advances; humanity lives its life around the circle of a still larger sea-the Atlantic Ocean. An unseen Presence walks up and down the shores calling men to follow Him. He calls John Knox, John Wesley, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, Henry P. Liddon, Horace Bushnell, Matthew Simpson, Henry Ward Beecher, Richard S. Storrs, Phillips Brooks, and Dwight L. Moody-another Twelve-and these leave all and follow Him. And we find these all on their faces before Him, each one saying, 'My Lord and my God!' Time passes; history is widening; humanity is building its civilization around a still wider sea-the Pacific Ocean. An unseen Presence moves up and down its shores calling men to follow Him, and, at cost of life itself, they are doing it. Other Twelves are forming. And what took place in Palestine nineteen centuries ago is taking place again in our own day, under our own eyes. China becomes like the Holy Land. Only the other day Herod stretched forth his hand and vexed certain of the Church, and he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword. Did you not see it reported in all the papers? Only a year or two ago Stephen, a Christian preacher, was mobbed. Before his persecutors he fell down helpless, and in his dying moments he prayed, 'Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.' It was in all the papers; did you not read it? Very recently Saul of Tarsus, having worked in Asia, in the Chinese Empire, was shoved to the wall by brutal force, and the last thing he said was: 'I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have